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2016

"Let Us Bury and Forget:" Civil War Memory andIdentity in Cabell County, West Virginia,1865-1915Seth Adam Nicholsnichols101@marshall.edu

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Recommended CitationNichols, Seth Adam, ""Let Us Bury and Forget:" Civil War Memory and Identity in Cabell County, West Virginia, 1865-1915" (2016).Theses, Dissertations and Capstones. 1066.http://mds.marshall.edu/etd/1066

“LET US BURY AND FORGET:” CIVIL WAR MEMORY AND IDENTITY IN CABELL

COUNTY, WEST VIRGINIA, 1865-1915

Marshall University

May 2016

A thesis submitted to

the Graduate College of

Marshall University

In partial fulfillment of

the requirements for the degree of

Master of the Arts

In

History

by

Seth Adam Nichols

Approved by

Dr. Michael Woods, Committee Chairperson

Dr. Kevin Barksdale

Mr. Jack Dickinson

iii

© 2016

Seth Adam Nichols

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

iv

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I consider it the greatest honor to provide, in this brief space, the names of some of the

most magnificent people without who this thesis might never have been realized. With this small

token I hope to forever immortalize your cheerful contributions to this work. It is to you all that I

dedicate this thesis. First, I want to thank the entire History Department for their unceasing

devotion to their students. I entered the history undergraduate program a quiet and uncertain

freshman, and thanks to their thoughtful and persistent tutelage, I emerged a confident graduate.

Of particular note I wish to thank Dr. Michael Woods for his incredible patience and insightful

guidance. Without his patient counsel and countless remarks during the writing and revision

process this thesis would never have been. I also wish to thank the amazing people at the

Marshall University Morrow Library. I am not only lucky enough to have the help and assistance

of such knowledgeable archivists and librarians, but am proud to call them friends as well. Nat,

Lori, Jackie, Gretchen, Andy, Jack and Lindsey thank you all so much for the emotional support

and encouragement. I want to thank all of my fellow graduate students who listened to me prattle

on about my research with genuine interest. Mike, Chris, John, Kate, Brooks, Derek, Tanner,

Catherine, Andrew, Caitlin, and Haley you have all provided valuable insight and

encouragement throughout the long process of writing. To my friends outside of the university,

Tyler, Logan, Josh, Monty, and Katie you have all helped keep me sane despite the tremendous

amount of pressure I put on myself. To my parents, Cathy and Steve, your positive

encouragement has made me who I am today. Finally, and most of all, to my loving wife,

Kristen, you always believed in me even when I had stopped believing in myself. There were so

many times I faltered, but you were always there during my hardest moments. Without your love

and support I would surely have resigned from such a task.

v

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Acknowledgements ........................................................................................................................ iv

List of Pictures……………………………………………………………………………………vi

Abstract ......................................................................................................................................... vii

Introduction: Huntington, West Virginia, and the Legacy of the Civil War .................................. 1

Chapter 1: Building to War .......................................................... Error! Bookmark not defined.4

War Comes to the County ................................................................................................... 22

Cabell County During Early Reconstruction ...................................................................... 32

Chapter 2: The Birth of a City ...................................................................................................... 42

Early Business and Industries ............................................................................................. 60

Industry, Sectional Identity, and the State of West Virginia .............................................. 68

Chapter 3: Civil War Veterans and Their Role in Memory .......................................................... 81

Veterans in Huntington ....................................................................................................... 89

Decoration Day ................................................................................................................... 94

Monument-Making and the Search for Identity ................................................................ 104

Conclusion……………………………………………………………………………………... 117

References ................................................................................................................................... 123

Appendix A: Office of Research Integrity Approval Letter ....................................................... 134

vi

LIST OF PICTURES

2.1 Map of Huntington 1871……………………………………………………………………..52

2.2 Map of Huntington 1872 Addition No.1...…………………………………………………...53

2.3 Map of Huntington 1872 Addition No.2……………………………………………………..54

2.4 Map of Huntington 1873 with Huntington Businesses……………………………………....61

2.5 Photograph of Grand Army of the Republic Parade 1…………………………………….....67

2.6 Photograph of Grand Army of the Republic Parade 2…………………………………….....67

4.1 Photograph of the Grave of Jack Washington……………………………………………...122

vii

ABSTRACT

This thesis covers the events of the Civil War in Cabell County, West Virginia, and how

those events were remembered by the county’s residents in the decades after the war. It provides

a brief look at the early development of the county and how its inhabitants sought to exploit the

county’s topography in order to facilitate commercial investment in the region. Cabell Countians

were deeply divided and several skirmishes between Union and Confederate forces produced a

time of terror and hardship. When the war was over, Cabell Countians sought a return to

normality and to renew projects that might bring economic prosperity to the region. However,

the animosity of the war was not easily forgotten and political acts such as proscription and

loyalty oaths continued to engender hostility. Collis P. Huntington’s announcement of his desire

to finish the C&O railroad and create a new town in the county provided economic opportunity

to many in the region. Wealthy landowners and businessmen on both sides attempted to settle the

differences of the war through shared and mutual financial success. Their desire to build a city

together necessitated forgetting the divisions that had set the inhabitants against one another.

Both factions suffered from a strong identity crisis and because of this neither group could

project a clear understanding of their side’s reasons for fighting. Cabell Countians were unable to

achieve reconciliation, despite their mutual cooperation, because neither side was ready to tackle

the issues that had plunged them into war. The economic opportunities offered by industrialism

had helped mitigate much of the animosity of the war years, but due to the incomplete nature of

reconciliation Union and Confederate veterans were unable to convey a resonant account of their

participation in the Civil War and what the war had meant to their side.

1

INTRODUCTION

HUNTINGTON, WEST VIRGINIA, AND THE LEGACY OF THE CIVIL WAR

On the intersection of Ninth Street and Fifth Avenue in Huntington, West Virginia stood

an old iron statue. By 1915, this silent sentinel had stood guard for over thirty-five years and had

watched Huntington grow from a small town to a bustling city. His view on Fifth Avenue had

seen several businesses flourish and grow. Across the avenue from him stood the Fifth Avenue

Hotel owned by Hansford Watts who was also the owner of a realty company, organizer of the

United Fuel Gas Company, and a partner in the Thornburg Insurance Agency. The Hotel directly

faced the Carnegie Library, named after its famously wealthy donor, and one of only three such

donations in the state of West Virginia.1 On August 6, 1915 local men came to take the faithful

soldier down from his post and escorted him to his final destination: the city junk heap.2 This

symbol of remembrance celebrated in 1880 was not welcome thirty five years later. What had

changed? The destruction of the Union statue is one of the many clues revealing the complicated

issues and feelings regarding memory of the Civil War within Cabell County.

During the Civil War, West Virginia broke away from Confederate Virginia and became

a separate Union state. This simple history glosses over the thousands of residents who did not

support the new state or the Union and fought against them during the war. Although the state of

West Virginia was not included in the Reconstruction Acts of 1867, it faced the imposing

challenges of determining what freedom meant for newly emancipated slaves, how Confederates

1 James Casto, “Lost Huntington: The Missing Statue,” The Herald Dispatch, accessed September 12, 2014; James

Casto, Cabell County (Charleston: Arcadia, 2001) 44. 2Julian E. Caton, “Old Veteran Sent to the Junk Heap,” Huntington Advertiser, August 7, 1915.

2

might reintegrate into society, and the fallout from the break with Virginia. The complicated

nature of these issues divided West Virginians largely along their war-time loyalties within the

early years of Reconstruction. Reconciliationist sentiment returned several years after the war,

but it came through a desire for economic investment in the region. Local and state elites worked

alongside out of state industrialists in order to develop industry in various areas of the state. The

economic investment in the region required stability and support among the local populace, and

led to a renewed desire for reconciliation. This mutual desire born from the economic

opportunities of the time was not full reconciliation, as it did not address the differences that led

West Virginians to choose sides during the war. Rather, this reconciliationist sentiment was

predicated on the widespread “forgetting” of the war, and the ideologies that had caused it. The

legacy of the war and its meaning still divided West Virginians in their writings, their

communities, and their stories to the next generation. Confederates conflicted with former

Unionists (and amongst themselves) over how to instill in future generations their own

interpretations of Civil War memory. Within Cabell County, a region quickly occupied by Union

forces early in the war but having strong Confederate sympathies, the war remained a contested

memory. This area saw rapid urbanization following the creation of the new industrial town of

Huntington and grew swiftly amidst the boom of industry and economic speculation that

expanded the region. Feelings and animosities that had caused such conflict during the war were

mitigated by the potential for prosperity offered by economic growth. These feelings were

calmed, but not completely forgotten. Public discourse of the war could quickly resurface old

tensions that had been boiling just beneath the surface.

3

The legacy of the Civil War had a strong impact on the development of Cabell County

and the city of Huntington. Continued animosity between Unionist and Confederate veterans

plagued much of the following years after the war. The growth of the manufacturing and railroad

hub of Huntington offered economic prosperity to the region, and shared economic development

appeared to Cabell County residents more fruitful and rewarding than pursuing sectional

animosities. A conservative coalition of businessmen representing both sides of the war thus

helped to diminish sectional animosities and helped promote a common unifying spirit of

economic growth. However, developments within the state and the nation played their part in

exacerbating conflict over the meaning of the war and its commemoration. The unity of

economic growth could smooth over the differences of the two former enemies, but could not

completely erase the deep seated feelings for which both sides fought. These developments

weakened the Unionist aspects of the war in Cabell County, memories centered on emancipation

and the importance of the Union, but helped to organize and develop the Confederate view of the

war. This view promoted support for the “Lost Cause” mythology and advocated white

supremacist history and practices. Although a coalition of wealthy industrialist veterans had

hoped to put aside differences between former enemies in hopes of bringing greater wealth and

prosperity to the region, animosity still ran deep by the fiftieth anniversary of the war’s end.

Civil War memory is a well-trodden historical field with many academics trying to

determine the full legacy of Reconstruction. This field of academic research was revitalized by

David Blight’s trailblazing analysis of the legacy of the war, Race and Reunion.3 Blight argued

that three different memories emerged from the war: reconciliation and reunion, race and

3 David Blight, Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory (Cambridge: Belknap Press, 2001).

4

emancipation, and a white supremacist memory. The reconciliationist aspect of memory dealt

with the sentimental desire to make sense of a devastating war, and to find common ground

amidst the dead and surviving soldiers. The emancipationist element of memory emerged as a

complex assortment of African-Americans’ understanding of freedom, and the belief that the

Union represented a liberating force set out to elevate freed slaves to their full Constitutional

rights. The white supremacist form of memory detailed the continued desire to subjugate African

Americans and often to the form of violence and terror. In the fifty years after the war, the

reunion and reconciliationist memory along with the white supremacist aspect overwhelmed race

and emancipation as the prevailing legacy of the war. While Blight’s book helped to create the

sub-field of Civil War memorial studies, memorial studies were already growing in World and

American history. Memorial studies blend cultural analysis with a political, economic, and social

history to produce a sub-field with a wide encompassing scope. In 2013, Caroline Janney

released her book, Remembering the Civil War: Reunion and The Limits of Reconciliation, which

argued that Blight’s original assertion of the primacy of the reunion and reconciliationist aspect

of memory was flawed.4 While there was reunion between the sections, reconciliation was not

fully achieved, and both sides continued to fight over the meaning and legacy of the Civil War.

The main argument of this thesis continues Janney’s assertion that reconciliation was a goal

much harder to achieve, and that sectional loyalties remained after the war as both sides

conflicted on how to portray the war’s meaning and the state’s involvement within it. This thesis

borrows from Blight’s original thesis showcasing the outcome of conflicting elements of

4 Caroline E. Janney, Remembering the Civil War: Reunion and The Limits of Reconciliation (Chapel Hill:

University of North Carolina Press, 2013).

5

memory, but agrees with Janney’s assertion that reunion between both sides did not constitute

full reconciliation and thus obscures the continued fight over the meaning of the war.

Amidst the broad discussion of national memory, historians have reflected on these new

ideas and explored how they apply to regional, state, institutional, biographical, and local topics.

David Goldfield shows the depths to which the South was shaped by the Civil War in Still

Fighting the Civil War: The American South and Southern History. Goldfield shows that the

tragic legacy of the war helped to foster in white southerners a conviction to uphold their

principles of white supremacy and patriarchy.5 In Reconstructing Appalachia: The Civil War’s

Aftermath, Andrew Slap brought together many prominent Appalachian historians to reflect on

how the war shaped the vital region of Appalachia. Though not necessarily focusing on the

memory of the war, these essays touch upon the nature of the war’s legacy and how

Appalachians dealt with the realities of its aftermath.6 These studies have shown that there is still

much scholarly work to be done in Reconstruction-era Appalachia, and more importantly in the

field of West Virginia Reconstruction. The essays included in the book still focus primarily on

the political history of West Virginia, neglecting the lives of individual West Virginians. Others

have turned to individual states to understand the legacies of the war. Anne E. Marshall’s

Creating a Confederate Kentucky: The Lost Cause and Civil War Memory in a Border State,

debunks the old view that Kentucky waited until after the war to secede from the Union by

arguing that Kentucky had always shared connections with the seceding southern states. The

5 David Goldfield, Still Fighting the Civil War: The American South and Southern History, Updated ed. (Baton

Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2013) 6 Andrew L. Slap, ed. Reconstructing Appalachia: The Civil War’s Aftermath (Lexington: The University Press of

Kentucky, 2010.)

6

state’s rebellion from the emancipationist legacy of the war during Reconstruction was simply a

continued adherence to a white supremacist political ideology.7 As Marshall’s book shows, the

assertion of white supremacist memory was not absolute, and often overshadows a fluid dialogue

amongst former Unionists, Confederates, and African Americans on the legacy of the war. Karen

Cox’s Dixie’s Daughters: The United Daughters of the Confederacy and the Preservation of

Confederate Culture illustrates the complex hierarchy of one such institution and the power it

wielded to define and propagate its imagining of “true” southern history.8 The Daughters had a

strong presence in West Virginia and was one of the primary shapers of Civil War memory.

Participants in the war, like Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson, have also undergone memorial

analysis. In Inventing Stonewall Jackson: A Civil War Hero in History and Memory, Wallace

Hettle illustrates how modern portrayals of the general have rested on the heroic exaggerations of

Jackson’s friends and admirers.9 Historians have run with the idea of historical memory of the

Civil War since Blight’s thesis in 2001, and the field has continued to grow.10 As the field of

Civil War memorial studies has grown, diverging interpretations have emerged to define the field

7 Anne E. Marshall, Creating A Confederate Kentucky: The Lost Cause and Civil War Memory in a Border State

(Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2010). 8 Karen Cox, Dixie’s Daughters: The United Daughters of the Confederacy and the Preservation of Confederate

Culture (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2003). 9 Wallace Hettle, Inventing Stonewall Jackson: A Civil War Hero in History and Memory (Baton Rouge: Louisiana

State University Press, 2011). 10 While the following paragraph provides a small glimpse into the field of Civil War memorial studies there

remains a large degree of historical work that cannot be covered in so focused an essay as this one. For additional

interest in the field of Civil War memorial studies see: Alice Fahs and Joan Waugh, eds. The Memory of the Civil

War in American Culture (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2004); W. Stuart Towns, Enduring

Legacy: Rhetoric and Ritual of the Lost Cause (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2012); Linda Barnickel,

Milliken’s Bend: A Civil War Battle in History and Memory (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2013);

Timothy B. Smith, The Great Battlefield of Shiloh: History, Memory, and the Establishment of a Civil War National

Military Park (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2006); Brian Craig Miller, John Bell Hood and the Fight

for Civil War Memory (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2010); Gary W. Gallagher, Lee and His Generals

in War and Memory (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1998); Benjamin G. Cloyd, Haunted by

Atrocity: Civil War Prisons in American Memory (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2010).

7

with many historians falling into camps supporting either Blight or Janney’s thesis. This

conflicting interpretation rests on the determination of how earnest was support among

nationalistic reconciliation rhetoric from both sides. Was the constructed reconciliation between

Northern and Southern whites a heartfelt determination to bury the hatchet and put to rest the

turbulent ideology of the Civil War, or did it represent the veneer of civility that rested on a

continued bitterness that further served to divide the nation as war time memories continued to

smolder among separate cultural forces.

Historians of West Virginia have paid little attention to Civil War memory, but their

extensive coverage of economic development during the postwar period is critical to

understanding the context within which Mountaineers argued over the legacy of the conflict.

Much of West Virginia history has been focused on the rise of industrialization, and related

political developments. Historians like Ronald Lewis, Ronald Eller, Ken Fones-Wolf, Altina

Waller, Jerry Bruce Thomas, and others have chronicled the significant economic changes that

occurred a few decades after the Civil War. In Ronald Lewis’ Transforming the Appalachian

Countryside, we see through the lens of the timber industry how outside industrialists

transformed the landscape and economy of West Virginia. Surging into rural “backcounties,”

industrialists created booming commercial centers that spurred growth and made small towns

boom as resources were harvested from nearby land. However, by the 1920s when the forests

were barren, capital ceased to flow into the state, hurting the economy and forcing many small

farmers to turn to wage labor to survive.11Altina Waller demonstrates the on-the ground aspect of

11 Ronald Lewis, Transforming the Appalachian Countryside: Railroads, Deforestation, and Social Change in West

Virginia, 1880-1920 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1998).

8

this by illustrating, through the Hatfield-McCoy feud, that a time of economic and social change

was occurring as many small time timber operators were thrust into national markets that

necessitated growth or brought about ruin. Competition between locals became heated and big

timber operators fanned the flames in order to undercut these small businesses and acquire their

lands.12 Ronald Eller’s book, Miners, Millhands, and Mountaineers: Industrialization of the

Appalachian South, 1880-1930, showed how the rise of industry isolated and trapped

Appalachians in a cycle of poverty caused by modernization.13 These themes extend beyond the

scope of this analysis, but their continuation within subsequent decades of West Virginia history

illustrates their impact.14

Historians have thoroughly mined the veins of West Virginia’s economic history after the

Civil War, and it is testament to the complexity and scope of this topic in West Virginia history

that historians are still finding more to argue and discuss. However, the same cannot be said for

analyses of West Virginia’s political history after statehood. Although this history is deeply

12 Altina Waller, Feud: Hatfields, McCoys, and Social Change in Appalachia, 1860-1900 (Chapel Hill: University

of North Carolina Press, 1988). 13 Ronald Eller, Miners, Millhands, and Mountaineers: Industrialization of the Appalachian South, 1880-1900

(Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1982). 14 This subject represents some of the most important historical questions in the field of West Virginia History.

Some important works include: Ken Fones-Wolf, Glass Towns: Industry, Labor, and Political Economy in

Appalachia, 1890-1930s (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2007); Ronald G. Garay, U.S. Steel and Gary, West

Virginia: Corporate Paternalism in Appalachia (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2011); Deborah R.

Weiner, Coalfield Jews: An Appalachian History (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2006). Although I have

covered some of the material within the development of industry in the region, there is a large body of literature that

continues this discussion beyond the scope of this analysis. Here are listed some important works that have

contributed to this body of literature and helped to develop my reasoning of West Virginia’s economic history. Jerry

Bruce Thomas, An Appalachian New Deal: West Virginia in the Great Depression (Lexington: University of

Kentucky Press, 1998); Ronald Eller, Uneven Ground: Appalachia Since 1945 (Lexington: University Press of

Kentucky, 2008); Jerry Bruce Thomas, An Appalachian Reawakening: West Virginia and the Perils of the New

Machine Age (Morgantown: West Virginia University Press, 2010.); Ken Fones-Wolf and Ronald Lewis, eds.,

Transnational West Virginia: Ethnic Communities and Economic Change, 1840-1940 (Morgantown: West Virginia

University Press, 2011).

9

complex and extensive, historians have neglected the topic for several years in spite of new

approaches and perspectives that could help to reinvigorate the topic by providing new questions

and answers.

Early scholarly discussion of West Virginia Reconstruction emerged from the Dunning

School emphasis on the evils of Radical Republican development in the state.15 Throughout

academia in the 1890s-1940s, this interpretation (named after Yale Professor William A.

Dunning) held sway over depictions of Reconstruction in the South. Their sharply critical view

of Radical Republicans, unanimous support of a defeated Confederacy, and racist depictions of

African Americans as inept and easily manipulated were only slightly tweaked by historians

analyzing West Virginia’s Reconstruction. Virgil Lewis, Charles A. Ambler, and Milton

Gerofsky articulated the deplorable actions of the Radicals within their work, but neglected

African American participation or involvement within the state.16 For these early historians the

story of Reconstruction occurred in a historical bubble between the Civil War and 1876 without

any context to the rest of West Virginia history. The state government held by the Radicals was

an abortive encroachment by the national government into the state government, and it was

beaten off by the common consent of a majority of West Virginians. Their story of

Reconstruction was a story that highlighted the developments in the state legislature along

15 Richard O. Curry, “A Reappraisal of Statehood Politics in West Virginia,” The Journal of Southern History 28,

no. 4 (Nov. 1962) 403. Curry utilized the phrase “Pro-Union apologists” to classify the likes of Charles Ambler and

others who argued for the barbarity of the Radical Republican government against the victim ex-Confederates. 16 Virgil A. Lewis, History and Government of West Virginia (Chicago: Werner School Book Company,

1896); Virgil A. Lewis, History of West Virginia in Two Parts (Philadelphia: Hubbard Brothers, 1889); Charles A.

Ambler, A History of Education in West Virginia: From Early Colonial Times to 1949 (Huntington: Standard

Printing & Publishing Company, 1951); Charles A Ambler, A History of West Virginia (New York: Prentice-Hall,

Inc., 1933); Charles A. Ambler, West Virginia: The Mountain State ( New York: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1940);

Milton Gerofsky, “Reconstruction in West Virginia (Part I),” West Virginia History 6, no.4 (July 1945): 295-360;

Milton Gerofsky, “Reconstruction in West Virginia (Part II),” West Virginia History 7, no. 1 (October 1945): 5-39.

10

partisan lines, and completely ignored developments outside the capital. Their story discussed

the development of industry, but neglected to show the connections between political leaders and

outside business interests. It took a new generation of historians to draw these connections, and

incorporate the “bubble” of West Virginia Reconstruction into the rest of its’ history.

By the early 1960s revisionist historians began to chip away at this traditionalist

interpretation. Richard Orr Curry, in his work on the politics of statehood, began to draw far

larger connections to preexisting political developments in West Virginia. His analysis on the

Copperhead movement in West Virginia highlighted the conservative elements within the

Unionist coalition that emerged as the Republican Party during the war. These conservatives,

known during the war as Copperheads for their believed sympathy to the rebellious states, were

the foundations for the breakup of the Republican Party in the early years of the 1870s. These

conservatives had been pro-Union and had joined with radical Republicans to form a Republican

Union Party unified by their loyalty to the United States. However, when the war was over the

conservatives balked at emancipation and the radical course of Reconstruction. Curry argued that

these members had not betrayed their Radical Republican counterparts, but had stayed true to

their conservative nature when Congressional Reconstruction began to enact civil rights

legislation for African Americans. Curry’s work demonstrated the strength of the statehood

movement in keeping the various political groups unified during the Civil War, and showing

their fragility once the war ended.

The most significant historian of West Virginia Reconstruction, John Alexander

Williams, was one of the first to tie the events of Reconstruction to the rest of the state’s

economic development. Williams studied under C. Vann Woodward at Yale University, where

11

his dissertation, “Davis and Elkins of West Virginia: Businessmen in Politics” (1967) helped to

develop his thinking on the events within West Virginia during Reconstruction. Williams’s

dissertation and his book, West Virginia and the Captains of Industry, viewed Reconstruction as

a political reshuffling of the deck.17 The state had always been a fundamentally conservative

state, although one predicated on agricultural wealth. As Reconstruction developed, these old

elites worked to tear down the coalition that made up the Republican Union Party. They then

worked with, fought, and were supplanted by outside industrialists and their allies to form a new

dominant conservative political force that dominated West Virginia politics for several

decades.18

For Williams, this perspective helped to put the story of Reconstruction within its proper

context. No longer was the story retained in the political bubble utilized by historians such as

Charles Ambler. Instead, Williams thought that by looking at the economic motives of the

partisan groups within West Virginia politics, one is better able to understand not only

Reconstruction but the industrial developments that occurred well into the 1920s. This

perspective coincided with a major trend in the larger field of Appalachian Studies. During the

1960s and 70s, historians discussing Appalachia had argued that many of the inhabitants were

mired in poverty and adopted values that reinforced these conditions. This “culture of poverty”

as advocated by Appalachian writers such as Harry Caudill and Jack Wells, sparked a

17 John A. Williams, “Davis and Elkins of West Virginia: Businessmen in Politics,” (PhD diss. Yale University,

1967); John A. Williams, West Virginia and the Captains of Industry, Rev. ed. (Morgantown: West Virginia

University Press, 2003). 18 John A. Williams, “The New Dominion and the Old: Antebellum Statehood Politics as the Background of West

Virginia’s ‘Bourbon Democracy,’” West Virginia 33, no. 4 (July 1972), 317-407.

12

development in social activism within academics and Appalachia overall.19 This social activism

was not foreseen by culture of poverty advocates who believed that only outside development

could change the region for the better. Native Appalachians organized into grassroots groups to

counteract the ever encroaching effects of industrialization and economic stagnation on their

region, and this energy brought renewed study into the region’s history. This “Appalachian

Revisionism” explains the connections Williams was making with regards to understanding the

nature of Reconstruction and the subsequent development of industry in West Virginia.20

An analysis of West Virginia’s history during Reconstruction and up to the height of

industrial development within the state by the early 1920s has been discussed but has not

received as much attention as it deserves. By analyzing this period through the perspective of

memory, historians can attempt to display the full repercussions of the Civil War on the state and

its subsequent development. What were the effects of the Civil War on West Virginians not just

during Reconstruction, but in popular discussion for decades afterward? How did the role of

business, industry, and market forces shape and influence the legacy of the Civil War? Did these

concerns override older sectional animosities and ideologies?

19 Harry Caudill and Jack Weller were two writers who helped to develop the idea of the subculture of poverty

theory within Appalachian historiography. Caudill is most known for his book, Night Comes to the Cumberlands

(1963) and Jack Weller is known for his book, Yesterday’s People (1965). Harry M. Caudill, Night Comes to the

Cumberlands: A Biography of a Depressed Area (Boston: Little, Brown, and Co., 1963); Jack Weller, Yesterday’s

People: Life in Contemporary Appalachia (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1965). 20 Dwight B. Billings, “Writing Appalachia: Old Ways, New Ways, and WVU Ways,” in Culture, Class, and

Politics in Modern Appalachia: Essays in Honor of Ronald L. Lewis, eds. Jennifer Egolf, Ronald L. Lewis, Louis C.

Martin, and Ken Fones-Wolf (Morgantown: West Virginia University Press, 2009), 1-28; Kenneth W. Noe,

“Appalachia Before Mr. Peabody,” Virginia Magazine of History & Biography 110, no. 1. (2002) 5-34; Andrew L.

Slap, “A New Frontier: Historians, Appalachian History, and the Aftermath of the Civil War,” in Reconstructing

Appalachia: The Civil War’s Aftermath, ed. Andrew L. Slap (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2010) 23-

48.; John D. Fowler, “Appalachia’s Agony: A Historiographical Essay on Modernization and Development in the

Appalachian Region,” Filson Club Historical Quarterly 72, no. 3 (1998) 305-328.

13

This thesis analyzes a period before, during, and after the Civil War from roughly 1850 to

the 1920s within Cabell County, West Virginia. After the creation of Huntington in 1871, the

county grew industrially for the rest of the century. Exploration of Cabell County’s contentious

loyalties during the Civil War along with this growing economic development in the last few

decades of the nineteenth century will demonstrate the interwoven connections between public

remembrance of the Civil War and industrial growth. This thesis analyzes political developments

of the state, but will illustrate these developments through the lives of ordinary West Virginians

within Cabell County.21 Through this perspective, this thesis illustrates the continued conflict

over the issues raised by the war, and shows the attempts by local elites to utilize economic

prosperity as a means to halt the sectional bitterness imposed by wartime suffering. The thesis

also demonstrates the short-term success but long term failure of this approach to quell the

animosity felt between former Union and Confederate veterans and their descendants.

21 Stephen B. Engle, “Mountaineer Reconstruction: Blacks in the Political Reconstruction of West Virginia,”

Journal of Negro History 78, no. 3 (Summer 1993) 137-165.

14

CHAPTER 1

BUILDING TO WAR

Even before the rise of industrialism in West Virginia, Cabell County was a central hub

for commerce in the region. Throughout the years before the Civil War, the residents of Cabell

County maintained a commitment toward economic prosperity. They attempted to ignore the

national discussion on the issue of slavery until the issue was brought home to the area. Although

there emerged a small but determined faction that was committed to protecting the institution of

slavery, the county at large remained resolute in favor of calls for moderation and sought a return

to normality. As the cataclysmic chain of events spiraled out of control, Cabell Countians must

have wondered whether all they had been working toward was to be dashed upon the wave of

imminent war.

Cabell County was formed out of Kanawha County in 1809 and named after former

Virginia governor (1805-1808) William H. Cabell. Several commissioners, assigned to find a

suitable county seat, agreed upon a small plot of land in a field owned by William Holderby near

the Guyandotte River.1 The town of Guyandotte formed around the county seat the following

year. The county seat remained at Guyandotte until 1814 where it was moved to the new town of

Barboursville. These two towns remained the economic and political centers of the county until

the creation of Huntington in 1871.

After the arrival of the county seat, Barboursville grew steadily into a large

manufacturing town. Residents cheered on the economic growth spurred by the creation of livery

stables, a fan mill factory, a wagon and buggy factory, a hat factory, a furniture factory, a large

1 George Seldon Wallace, Cabell County Annals and Families (Richmond: Garrett & Massie Publishers, 1935), 10.

15

tannery, and several harness shops, tailors, blacksmiths, and shoemakers.2 A large mill owned by

Miller & Moore cut out the bottoms of steamboats and cleared lumber over 36 feet long.3

Barboursville, like Guyandotte, was the center of trade for outlying communities such as Pea

Ridge, Union Ridge, Cabell Creek, and Ona.4 Although the town itself was a center of

manufacturing it was surrounded by small but prosperous farms. Primary products were large

quantities of grain, fat hogs, sheep, and cattle, with hogs being the accepted “cash crop.”5 The

town saw much of this early commercial success thanks to the creation of the Kanawha and

James River Turnpike that ran from Covington, Virginia, to the Big Sandy River. This road

brought visitors, settlers, businessmen, and politicians across the Blue Ridge Mountains into the

wilderness of Western Virginia.

In contrast to Barboursville, Guyandotte was an important port along the Ohio River

between Cincinnati and Pt. Pleasant. Situated at the mouth of the Guyandotte River as it flows

into the Ohio, the town was situated as a perfect spot for shipping and trading into the interior of

Western Virginia. The completion of locks and dams within and a suspension bridge over the

Guyandotte River, further benefited the town’s economic prospects. The Board of Public Works

of Virginia began as early as 1853 to construct a railroad from Covington to the Ohio River with

work proceeding around Guyandotte and Barboursville.6 As the debate over slavery began

spilling out into civil war, many Cabell County residents urged the Virginia Legislature to finish

2 J.W. Miller, History of Barbourville Community (Morgantown: Agricultural Extension Division, 1925), 1. 3 Ibid, 1. 4 Mrs. W.A. Millard and Allene Wilson, Farm Bureau Community of History of Pea Ridge (n.p., 1924), 1; Mrs.

Walter Mitchell, History of Cabell Creek Community (Morgantown: Agricultural Extension Division, 1925), 6. 5 Miller, 2 6 Joe Geiger Jr. Civil War in Cabell County, West Virginia 1861 -1865 (Charleston: Pictorial Histories Publishing

Company, 1991), 2. Geiger’s, Civil War in Cabell County, provides an exemplary in depth analysis of Cabell

County’s development and commercial history before the Civil War. Much of the analysis in this section describing

and commenting on the economic concerns of Cabell Countians before the war rests on Geiger’s early analysis.

16

the railroad.7 Before and after the Civil War, Guyandotte became one of the frequent stops for

lumber and coal exported from communities like Logan and Salt Rock further up the river. The

town itself remained busy with several hotels and businesses operating along Main Street. The

announcement that the terminus of a railroad commissioned by the Board of Public Works of

Virginia was to be built in Guyandotte was widely celebrated. However work was abandoned

because of the Civil War, and the railroad was not completed (and the terminus moved to the

new town of Huntington) until after the war.8

Before the Civil War many of the western counties of Virginia suffered from lack of

infrastructure and because of this large sections of the state remained as small communities.

However the accessibility provided by the Guyandotte and Ohio Rivers as well as the Kanawha

and James River Turnpike, afforded Cabell County a larger degree of connection to the rest of

the nation. Several of its citizens were able to become extremely wealthy by strategically

acquiring large amounts of land and taking advantage of the availability of close transportation.

Sampson Sanders, perhaps the richest man in the county, was also one of its biggest landowners.

Sanders farmed his large section of land with several dozen slaves, owned and operated a grist

and saw mill, and was one of the commissioners to help install the locks and dams along the

Guyandotte River. Upon his death in 1848, his will offered a provision that all of his slaves were

freed upon his death, and fifteen hundred dollars was assigned to help them acquire homes for

themselves.9

7 Ibid, 2; Wallace, Cabell County Annals and Families, 125. 8Geiger, Civil War in Cabell County, 2. 9 Ibid, 5.

17

Other communities in Cabell County prospered thanks to the efforts of local wealthy

families. William Jenkins moved to the area of northern Cabell County known as Greenbottom

in 1825 after earning a name as a successful businessman in shipping goods up and down the

James River. He purchased 4,395 acres of land around Greenbottom for $15,000, and set up the

largest plantation in the county. His plantation grew corn and grain and utilized the work of over

thirty-seven slaves.10 Several other influential settlers left such a lasting impression upon the

landscape that their names became synonymous with certain regions of the county. Paul M.

Davis, a Virginian who moved to Cabell County in 1832, formed the small community of Davis

Creek.11 William T. Cox moved to Cabell County in 1835 and bought a huge tract of land along

the Ohio River. This area, soon to be known as Cox’s Landing, was where he raised eleven sons

and one daughter and sold lumber off his farm to fuel the steamboats traveling along the river.12

Like the rest of the nation in the 1850s, the heated discussion over the institution of

slavery slowly divided the small county. In 1857 Massachusetts Congressman Eli Thayer

organized several meetings within Cabell and neighboring Wayne County to propose his new

settlement of Ceredo. Thayer’s plan was to “colonize” the southern states: by settling northerners

in industrious settlements throughout the South, slavery might eventually die out peacefully as

northerners slowly formed sizeable and wealthy factions in state and local politics and ended the

institution legally. Thayer’s plans were ambitious, but early trials in Kansas had proven

promising and Thayer was able to find sufficient backing for his plan. On July 21, 1857 Thayer

10 Jack Dickinson, Historical Survey of Greenbottom, Cabell County, West Virginia (West Virginia: J.L. Dickinson,

1988), 3-5. 11 James T. Blankenship, A Brief History of Davis Creek Community (Morgantown: Agricultural Extension Division,

1925), 1. 12 Mrs. John Kyle, Early History of Little Seven Mile Community (Morgantown: Agricultural Extension Division,

n.d.), 1-2.

18

addressed a meeting of citizens in Guyandotte and argued for the necessity of a large

manufacturing center between Guyandotte and the Big Sandy River. Thayer conveyed his

message in business terms in order to make the proposal more appealing to the locals. The

meeting was deemed “eminently practical” and Thayer was welcomed by the community.13

Thayer, however, hadn’t faced his biggest challenge yet. Fellow congressman Albert

Gallatin Jenkins, son of William Jenkins of Greenbottom, was managing his father’s plantation

and was an ardent defender of slavery. In response to the Guyandotte meeting on July 21,

Jenkins held a meeting of his own where several Guyandotte citizens, including some of Jenkins’

close friends, passed resolutions expressing their conviction to destroy any attempts at

abolitionism within the county.14 The feuding between Thayer and Jenkins continued until it died

out by 1858, but had succeeded in polarizing the region. Continuing his ardent defense of slavery

in a speech given to Congress on April 26, 1860, Jenkins explained the economic impact of a

loss of millions of dollars worth of property, and the dangers of a free African-American

population. More ominously, Jenkins declared that if the North did not cease its abolitionist

efforts the slaveholding states must pursue, “whatever course the South in her extremity may see

proper to take, on you will rest the responsibility.”15

The verbal attacks against Thayer and Jenkins brought the growing national divide closer

to home, and soon many in Guyandotte had to decide where their loyalties lay. Cabell Countians

were divided over the issue of slavery, but having faced the tumultuous issue first hand in the

13 Jack Dickinson and Kay Stamper Dickinson, Soldier of Greenbottom: The Life of Brig. Gen. Albert Gallatin

Jenkins, CSA (Huntington: J. Dickinson, 2011), 41-43. 14 Ibid, 45. 15 Ibid, 172. Enclosed in the appendices of Mr. and Mrs. Dickinson’s, Soldier of Greenbottom, is a full copy of the

speech Jenkins delivered to Congress.

19

feuding of Eli Thayer and Albert Jenkins, many hedged their bets on a moderate Unionist

candidate for president. Stephen Douglas carried the county with 407 votes, followed by John

Bell with 316, while a sizeable and pro-Southern faction brought a significant number of votes,

161, to the Southern Democrat John Breckinridge, and Abraham Lincoln received only four

votes in the entire county.16 Lincoln’s victory in the national election set off alarms both

nationally and locally. Already concerned by the actions of abolitionists in the North and now

worried by the election of a “Free Soil” Republican, several of Jenkins’s friends and associates

formed a militia to protect a Virginia flag banked on the edge of the Ohio River on December 10,

1860.17 While it is unsure whether they suspected eminent invasion, their show of force was

apparent to many in the surrounding area. South Carolina seceded ten days later, followed by six

more states by the beginning of February. It was not clear whether Virginia might secede from

the Union, but no matter what the state’s stance the actions of these Guyandotte militiamen

demonstrated that the time for talk was ending.

Virginia’s decision determined the nature of the conflict within Cabell County. The

mustering of men ready to fight it out within Guyandotte only added to the unease of those

Cabell County residents who sought moderation and a return to the status quo. On January 14,

1861, the General Assembly of Virginia passed an act appointing a special convention to decide

upon the issue of secession. Cabell County elected former Congressman William McComas of

Barboursville to the secession convention. McComas, a former Jacksonian Congressman from

16 Geiger, Civil War in Cabell County, 10. 17James D. Sedinger, James D. Sedinger Diary, Accession 2001/0703.297, Rosanna Blake Library, James E.

Morrow Library, Marshall University, Huntington, WV.

20

1830 to 1833, became and was elected as an anti-Jacksonian from 1834 to 1837.18 His Whig

party leanings made him an appealing choice for Cabell County citizens who were deeply fearful

of both extremes. They reasoned that such a man could be relied upon to vote with the

sympathies of the majority of the population. Cabell Countians had worked hard on improving

the commercial sector of the area, and conflict could only ruin all they had worked toward.

Although Virginia rejects secession on April 4, 1861, eight days later Fort Sumter is

fired upon by Confederate forces. Lincoln’s call for 75,000 volunteers reached the assembled

delegates on April 15, 1861, and with this news several delegates changed their vote. On April

17, 1861 the Virginia convention voted for secession. McComas, like many other representatives

from the western counties, voted against secession, but could not stand up against the united

support of the eastern counties. War had been inaugurated and Virginia with a vote of 88 to 55 in

favor of secession, cast its lot with the Confederacy pending approval by popular vote.19 Three

days after Virginia’s decision, on April 20, 1861, Albert Jenkins returned to Guyandotte after

completing his last day as a U.S. Congressman. He assembled the militiamen of Guyandotte and

other concerned men with southern sympathies from around the county at his plantation at

Greenbottom. This militia, known as the Border Rangers, later became Company E of the 8th

Virginia Cavalry. Many of these men were longtime friends of Jenkins and included members

who had earlier supported his attempts at foiling the plans of Eli Thayer and his “northern

colony” of Ceredo.20 On May 23, 1861 the residents of Cabell County voted alongside

18 Biographical Directory of the United States Congress 1774-Present , “William McComas,”

http://bioguide.congress.gov/scripts/biodisplay.pl?index=M000352, accessed June 24, 2016. 19 Wallace, Cabell County Annals and Families, 34. 20 Dickinson and Dickinson, Gentleman Soldier of Greenbottom, 44-45; Geiger, Civil War in Cabell County, 49.

Several of the committee members of an anti-Thayer meeting that Jenkins held on August 26, 1857 included Ira J.

21

Virginians throughout the state, but unlike a majority of voters the county voted overwhelmingly

against secession.21 The only exception to this rule appeared to be Guyandotte, which, one

Wheeling Daily Intelligencer correspondent claimed, “was a hot bed of secession and the

southern folks do about as they please.”22

With the creation of the Border Rangers, Cabell County had its first organized military

force march through the county and it was not the last. Residents had long worked to improve the

county by attracting businesses and capitalizing on the opportunities afforded by navigable rivers

and well maintained roads. The advent of civil war threw all of this work into jeopardy, and

threatened to tear apart the region. While sources prevent us from knowing exactly how Cabell

Countians felt in April 1861, we can see a prevailing trend towards moderate, union supporters

McGinnis (the first captain of the Border Rangers), John Everett, Dr. G.C. Ricketts, and Louis Sedinger (all of

whom had sons serve in the Border Rangers). 21 Richard Curry, A House Divided: A Study of Statehood Politics and the Copperhead Movement in West Virginia

(Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1964), Appendix I, 141-147. The actual voting record for the popular

vote on secession in Virginia does not exist according to historian Richard Curry. Curry is able to provide evidence

of several counties’ votes through other sources, primarily newspapers such as the Wheeling Daily Intelligencer, but

also numerous manuscript collections at archives in the West Virginia University Library, Library of Congress, and

the Virginia State Library in Richmond. Curry’s analysis, although extensive and rational, needs a fresh look to

explore newly uncovered sources and research. However, the conclusions reached by Curry on the estimated vote

appear to conform to existing sources. Fourteen counties were covered by the Wheeling Daily Intelligencer on June

1, 1861 with the number of votes for both sides announced, and for nineteen other counties in Northwestern Virginia

the winning side and its majority vote over the other was recorded. Cabell County was listed as one of the nineteen

where it voted against secession with a majority of 650 votes over those supporting secession. By analyzing the

percentage of the electorate that voted on the issue from counties whose numbers were reported, Curry argues that

approximately 80% of the electorate voted in each county. When compared to Cabell County’s voting population in

1861, 1,490, Curry argues that the vote in Cabell County was approximately 271 votes for secession and 971 votes

against it. 22 Wallace, Cabell County Annals and Families, 34. There are several stories found in the Fred Lambert Collection

at Marshall University, Kanawha Valley Star newspaper, and by accounts from memoirs of various members of the

community, such as W.S. Laidley, in Wallace’s Cabell County Annals and Families as well as J.W. Miller’s account

in History of the Barboursville Community to support the idea that Guyandotte had a strong presence of rebel

sympathizers. While many of these accounts were published long after the end of the war and make many of their

more exact claims suspect, sources of the time period seem to agree with this assertion. It is unknown how many of

these citizens could have been labeled as such, since anywhere from five to one hundred Union sympathizing men

were captured in the raid on Nov. 11. I argue that Guyandotte was more than likely the most contested area of the

County and if Confederates didn’t have majority support in the town before the raid, they definitely did after it.

22

with a small elite that held pro-slavery and secessionist sympathies. The influence of this

minority faction provides the best explanation for prevailing notions after the war that “Cabell

County was Southern in its sympathies.”23 This assertion does not mean that the county was a

bastion of Union sentiment, but demonstrates the influence Confederate veterans had after the

war in shaping a county history more favorable to the Confederate cause. On the eve of war,

Confederates and Confederate sympathizers were the exception not the rule.

WAR COMES TO THE COUNTY

Much of the actual violence of the war occurred early on for Cabell Countians with

skirmishes occurring around Barboursville and Guyandotte within the war’s first several months.

Although there was very little bloodshed in these skirmishes, a raid by the Border Rangers into

Guyandotte on November 10, 1861, killed several Union men and captured many Union

sympathizing civilians. This raid and the subsequent burning of Guyandotte destabilized the

region and brought to life the worst fears of many of the unionist and secessionist men in the

county. The dynamics of this raid illustrate the climate of fear that permeated citizens and

soldiers of both sides.

In order to understand the exaggerations of memory that occurred after the war years, a

thorough understanding of the first year of the war needs to be established. Throughout the late

spring and early summer of 1861, Union and Confederate armies briefly clashed with one

another in skirmishes along the border states. Skirmishes at Romney and Phillipi, Virginia,

illustrated both sides’ inexperience and shortcomings, but also reminded West Virginians how

23 Ibid, 39.

23

close the war was to home. With many residents of Cabell County still unsure of what side they

might take, the Border Rangers set out from Guyandotte in May 1861.

The Border Rangers had moved from Guyandotte to their camp in the Kanawha Valley

and then rushed toward Point Pleasant where they captured several Union sympathizers. Men

under the command of Colonel Jesse S. Norton left their camp at Gallipolis and pursued the

Confederates across the river. Although they were unable to catch up to the Border Rangers, they

captured over thirty secessionists in Mason County and shipped them back over the Ohio to

Camp Chase Prison in Columbus, Ohio.24 Although the captured civilians from both sides were

eventually released this set a precedent that sparked fear on both sides of the Ohio. These

“captures” of large numbers of civilians on both sides is largely forgotten in later accounts of the

war. These events heightened the fear and uncertainty within the region, and made the war feel

more akin to marauding guerrillas which was not the way either side wished to be remembered.

On June 6 the Ironton Weekly Register reported that men from Guyandotte brought down

the secessionist flag in Guyandotte. Regardless of who brought down the flag, the absence of the

Border Rangers demonstrated a weakened support for secession and likely meant that

Confederate sympathizers did not have the means of establishing a firm hold over the town

without force.25 Not far behind the Confederates were Union troops under the command of

General Jacob Cox who gathered his forces on the other side of the river. Cox moved his forces

forward on July 11 and took control of Guyandotte shortly after landing. Upon arriving in

Guyandotte, Union men questioned secessionists in the town and confiscated horses owned by

24 Geiger, Civil War in Cabell County, 14-15. 25 Ironton Weekly Register, June 6, 1861.

24

the retiring Confederates. The town, although described as a troublesome “Secession Hole,” and

troublesome by two Unionist newspapers, was also home to many loyal civilians. These Unionist

sympathizers were largely ignored by contemporary reporters of the time, and in many accounts

after the war only mentioned as prisoners captured at the subsequent raid at Guyandotte several

months later.26 With the Confederates retiring from the town and the advance of the Yankees,

many of the families and relatives who supported the Confederacy fled from Guyandotte. The

Union forces under Colonel William E. Woodruff, with the advice and help of Union

sympathizers in Guyandotte, set out for Barboursville where Confederate forces were camped.

The Confederate forces, however, were mostly militia, and some weren’t even secessionists. The

Ironton Weekly Register mentions several of the militia men were Unionist, but were misled by

rumors of Federal atrocities in Guyandotte.27 However, the greater portion of the force was

Confederate militiamen from Cabell and neighboring counties Wayne and Logan, along with the

Border Rangers, who had rushed to defend the county seat.

On July 12, 1861, the two forces briefly skirmished outside the town along a covered

bridge over the Guyandotte River. The 2nd Kentuckians moved to cross the covered bridge and

were met with a hail of fire from the ridge overlooking the bridge from the opposite side. The

Union soldiers returned fire but then charged with bayonets and sent the militiamen retreating

26 Ironton Weekly Register, July 18, 1861; Wheeling Daily Intelligencer, July 18, 1861; “‘Uncle Billy’ Miller, 90

Years Old, Recalls Battle of Mud River,” Miscellaneous Civil War Materials, Rosanna Blake Library, James E.

Morrow Library, Marshall University, Huntington, WV. There appears to be a consensual agreement that there was

a higher proportion of secessionists in Guyandotte than in other parts of the county. Although Union sympathizing

men were present in the town (the Guyandotte Raid in November of 1861 will drag away somewhere between five

to a hundred Union sympathizers to Prisoner of War Camps), many accounts fail to account for or neglect to

mention their presence within the town. 27 Ironton Weekly Register, July 18, 1861; Geiger, Civil War in Cabell County, 25. The Ironton Weekly Register

mentions that subsequent interviews with surrendering secessionists found that many of them were led to believe

that the Federals were terrorizing the citizens of Cabell County as they went.

25

down the ridge. Within a week, recollections began to inflate the size, casualties, and bravery of

one or the other side fighting.28 Although this battle was only a minor skirmish, it became a

defining moment for many recollections of the war, for it demonstrated the resolve of the citizens

of Cabell County to attempt to repel the “invaders” which helped Confederate sympathizers to

equate their feelings with those of the rest of the county.

The most controversial event of the entire war for Cabell Countians took place in

November 1861 as the contested town of Guyandotte was raided by Confederate forces, and then

burned by Union forces after it had been recaptured. For many Confederate sympathizers the raid

remained fresh in accounts of the war because it added to the belief that Guyandotte and the

Cabell County area were strongly secessionist, but also vindicated their choice by showing the

Union soldiers as being despicable. Unionists recalled the treachery of the Guyandotte citizens

who appeared to be complicit in knowledge of the raid and attempted to thwart any action by

Federal forces in mounting a defense. Well into the 1930s and 1940s, the various accounts of the

Raid on Guyandotte seemed to favor the Confederate memory of the war either through written

collaboration or omission.29 Many who recalled the raid seemed more focused on the burning of

the town rather than the events that preceded it.

For the several months before the raid the residents of Cabell County slowly came to

grips with the realities of the war as the fighting drifted further east. Cabell County remained in

28 James D. Sedinger, typescript copy of James D. Sedinger diary, 21 pages, Accession 2001/0703.297, Special

Collections, Rosanna Blake Library, Marshall University, Huntington, WV; Wheeling Daily Intelligencer, July 18,

1861; Ironton Weekly Register, July 18, 1861; “‘Uncle Billy’ Miller, 90 Years Old, Recalls Battle of Mud River,”

Miscellaneous Civil War Materials, Rosanna Blake Library, James E. Morrow Library, Marshall University,

Huntington, WV. Several of these accounts occurred soon after the skirmish had happened, but still attempt to

dramatize the actions of both forces; see the articles in the Wheeling Daily Intelligencer and the Ironton Weekly

Register. 29 Wallace, Cabell County Annals and Families, 39; Wiatt Smith, “Four Score Years in Guyandotte,” in Guyandotte

Centennial (Guyandotte Centennial and Cabell County Home Coming Association, 1910), 79-80.

26

Union hands throughout the war, and Guyandotte was set up as a camp to recruit new Union

soldiers for the 9th West Virginia Regiment under Major Kellian V. Whaley. On November 5,

1861, Confederate forces under General John B. Floyd sent a detachment of his Confederate

forces on a morale-boosting raid to the Ohio River. Included was the 8th Virginia Cavalry,

Company E, known formerly as the Border Rangers, and many of them cheerfully welcomed this

news since they were “going home for the first time since we left in the spring.”30 The

Confederates made their way into Cabell County and progressed to the outskirts of Guyandotte

by the evening of November 10 where they attacked late into the evening. The Confederates

made quick work of killing the pickets posted around town and before night had fallen the town

lay in Confederate hands. Dr. J. H. Rouse, one of the prisoners taken during the raid and who

later became a Surgeon for the 9th Virginia Regiment (U.S.), wrote a year later in 1862 his

account of the raid. In it he described in vivid imagery the barbarism of the Confederate troops

who committed several atrocities such as brutally executing a surrendering Union soldier. One

surrendering Union soldier upon being captured by the rebels was “seized by the hair of the head

by the chief of the rebels, Wilson B. Moore, who placing a revolver to his victim’s temples,

discharged its contents into his head, literally blowing his brains out, mutilating his head in a

shocking manner.” Then the secessionist women of Guyandotte, Rouse claimed, “became so

elated that they offered up cheer after cheer to his Satanic majesty (Jeff Davis) that they became

hoarse.”31 While other newspapers corroborate the horrible “Massacre” at Guyandotte, many of

30 James D. Sedinger, typescript copy of James D. Sedinger diary, 21 pages, Accession 2001/0703.297, Special

Collections, Rosanna Blake Library, Marshall University, Huntington, WV. 31 Dr. J.H. Rouse, Horrible Massacre at Guyandotte, Va., and A Journey to the Rebel Capital with a Description of

Prison Life in a Tobacco Warehouse at Richmond (n.p., 1862), 11.

27

the Confederate accounts remain terse or omit the details of the raid.32 James Sedinger, a

corporal in the 8th Virginia Cavalry, wrote with levity that upon securing Guyandotte the boys

“crossed the Bridge over into town and kissed all the girls in town.”33

On the morning of November 11, the Confederates began evacuating the town, taking

with them around five to one hundred prisoners of war. Many of the prisoners were Union

soldiers of the 9th Virginia (U.S.) but several of them were Union sympathizers such as Dr.

Rouse, William Douthitt, Albert White, John W. Alford, Matthew Thompson, Thomas Kyle, and

a Mr. Morey. These men were known as “Tories” and were forced to march along with the

Union soldiers all the way to Richmond to be sent to prison camps. As the Confederates began to

leave the city, Union soldiers from 5th Virginia (U.S.) and several Proctorville Home Guard units

from across the river arrived just above Guyandotte. As their steamer the Boston approached the

shore, adjutant J.C. Wheeler of the 9th Virginia reported: “The hypocritical secessionist citizens,

who had been instrumental in getting up the attack, came on the bank of the Ohio with a great

number of white flags, which they waived with great apparent earnestness.”34 These citizens

were more than likely those Unionists who had managed to escape or who had hidden and were

looking for help from the approaching Federals. However, after hearing stories of the

Guyandotte citizens’ efforts to help the Confederate raiders, the Union soldiers were not in any

mood to assist any of the residents of the town. After the Federal forces fired on the retreating

Confederates, several of the soldiers and Home Guards began to set fire to the town. Unionist

32 Ironton Weekly Register, November 14, 1861; Wheeling Daily Intelligencer November 13, 1861. 33 James D. Sedinger, typescript copy of James D. Sedinger diary, 21 pages, Accession 2001/0703.297, Special

Collections, Rosanna Blake Library, Marshall University, Huntington, WV. 34 United States War Department. War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and

Confederate Armies (Washington D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1880-1901). Series I, Volume V, 411-412.

28

and Confederate sympathizers alike saw their houses put to the torch as the Federal forces

reoccupied the town.35 As the fire raged, Union forces captured sixteen secessionists and sent

them across the river toward the Union prison camp, Camp Chase.36 Union forces held

Guyandotte and much of Cabell County throughout the remaining years of the war.

The raid on Guyandotte was the most significant event in Cabell County during the war.

It set the precedent for much of the subsequent course of the war. William Dusenberry early in

January 1862, only two months after the raid, wrote: “The Civil War now distracting our beloved

country, has ruined our business and is causing everything along the border here to be destroyed.

Being a Union man I do not know what moment I may be stripped of everything and driven from

my home. My greatest wish is that before this day 1863 peace and harmony will be restored and

we will be a united and happy people again.”37 The raid had killed around twelve Union soldiers,

with 30 wounded, and many captured.38 The Confederates lost significantly less with around

three dead and a few wounded, but had about sixteen secessionists captured from Guyandotte

after Federal forces retook the town. What was most important was the effect these attacks had

upon the civilian population. While many had already chosen sides by the first few months and

the clash at Barboursville, a cloud of fear had descended upon the county. Neighbors had turned

upon each other and many were betrayed to soldiers on both sides who looted stores and

businesses, took prisoners to disease ridden camps, and even killed some civilians on the spot.39

35 Smith, Guyandotte Centennial, 79-80. 36 Geiger, Civil War in Cabell County, 58. 37 William F. Dusenberry. Carrie Eldridge Collection “Dusenberry Diaries,” January 1, 1863, Accession

1992/01.0551, Special Collections, James E. Morrow Library, Marshall University, Huntington, WV. 38 Geiger, Civil War in Cabell County, 57. 39 Geiger, Civil War in Cabell County, 54; Fred B. Lambert, Fred B. Lambert Collection Accession 1978/06.0236,

Box 2, Notebook 19, “Achilles Fuller,” pgs. 21-22, Special Collections, James E. Morrow Library, Marshall

University, Huntington WV. Geiger outlines a feud between two families, the Sheltons and the Fullers. According to

events, Henry Shelton, a secessionist, wanted to turn over one of the sons of Achilles Fuller to Confederate

29

The following years of the war were tied to these developments as civilians and soldiers

on both sides descended into lawlessness. Although Union forces were stationed at Guyandotte

throughout much of the remainder of the war, the threat of another Confederate raid in Cabell

County always remained a possibility. Jenkins and his cavalrymen often returned to visit family,

and skirmished with the Union garrison.40 Bandits plagued the county; on January 5, 1863,

bandits stole county tax books from the courthouse in Barboursville.41 The courts were moved

back to Guyandotte due to the presence of Union forces garrisoned there. Courts were reopened

under the authority of the new state of West Virginia in November 1863 and began to issue

indictments and verdicts against citizens in rebellion and rebel sympathizers. Many indictments

concerned not registering taxes under the new state government for those adhering to the state of

Virginia. Other notable crimes were those suspected of feeding armed rebels, and others for the

stealing of provisions and horses meant for the service of Confederates.42 Perhaps in retaliation

in January 1864, Confederates under Captain Hurston Spurlock of the 16th Virginia raided the

area around Guyandotte and took prisoners of veterans of the 5th and 9th West Virginia, and also

several civilians including deputy sheriff Smith, magistrate John Ferguson, and the revenue

commissioner of the county, Wright.43 In April, two members of the 13th West Virginia were

shot in Mud Bridge on the eastern edge of the county by bushwackers and both were critically

injured.44 Many other instances of violence and banditry were reported and many times the

authorities believing him to be a Union messenger. Achilles and John Fuller went to Shelton’s home with hunting

rifles and killed Henry Shelton. Along the way to Guyandotte, the sons of Henry Shelton, serving as Confederate

cavalrymen under Jenkins, appeared at the door to Achilles Fuller, greeted him at the door, and shot him on his

porch. 40 Geiger, Civil War in Cabell County, 71-78. 41 Ibid, 79; Wallace, Cabell County Annals and Families, 11-13. 42 Ibid, 13-15. 43 Geiger, Civil War in Cabell County, 87. 44 Ibid, 89.

30

Union garrison in Guyandotte was called to pursue suspected criminals and rebels. Cabell

County was not alone in this regard, as neighboring Wayne, Putnam, and Mason Counties all

suffered from frequent raids and bushwacker activity.

As the war drew to a close in April 1865, locals expressed jubilance, anger, and relief.

For many loyal citizens these feelings quickly turned to sorrow when news arrived of the

assassination of Abraham Lincoln on April 15. This sadness soon turned to anger as

Confederates began to return and attempt to go back to their everyday lives. Four years of terror

was not soon forgiven and many Confederates were forced out of the town by vengeful loyalist

citizens. Tensions had already been boiling as returning Confederates had demanded a

restoration of the status quo and to be allowed their rights under the United States government.

During a session of the Cabell County Circuit Court, Dr. William A. Jenkins, brother to Albert

G. Jenkins (who had been killed at the Battle of Cloyd’s Mountain in May 1864), tried to have

the previous decisions of the court against him set aside while he had been away fighting in the

war. This action sparked a fiery debate in the court in regards to the imposition of the “test

oaths” passed by the late state legislature. These “test oaths” were passed on February 25, 1865,

and allowed any voter to be challenged by a citizen to take an oath that they had never

voluntarily borne arms against or taken an office hostile to the United States, or the state of West

Virginia. These oaths were passed as a war measure, but many in the state legislature argued that

the oaths were necessary to prevent the return to power of influential Confederates. A voter’s

registration law was passed in 1866 and it went a step above and completely disenfranchised

Confederates. Judge Nash from Gallipolis, Ohio, claimed that the state was unable to make such

a law as “treason against the State” and argued vehemently that a man had every right to go fight

in a rebellion and then return and be fully restored to his former rights without taking any kind of

31

test oath. Nash even threatened to “raise an army, march over into our State, and compel us to

recognize them as citizens not as aliens.” At this, attorney James Ferguson shot back at Nash

reminding him that the “free state of Ohio” should remember that these men he was threatening

were “Union men.” Getting more and more worked up Ferguson vented the sentiments of many

of these Union men throughout the county. Reported by the Point Pleasant Register Ferguson

stated: “Dr. Jenkins was not satisfied with the old government, and with his associates had

deluged this country with blood, and now when there is no hope of their ‘confederacy,’ they

come sneaking back and declared every ‘devil of them ought to be hung.’”45

Another notable incident occurred in Guyandotte, the so called hotbed of secession for

the county. On May 24, several prominent Guyandotte lawyers who had served for several years

in the Confederate cavalry that had raided the county, attempted to return to their law careers by

signing a petition allowing for their admittance to the county court and persuading influential

residents to sign it. For many Union men this was too much. Dusenberry described how several

Union officers, loyal men of Guyandotte, and himself “happened in there and we gave them

thunder.”46 Several members had already been persuaded to sign, but on the following day others

had a change of heart and asked to be removed from the petition. News had already been spread

among the citizenry and the mood quickly turned against the former Confederates. “Old Man

Ballard hunted up [Vinc] Samuels and told him he had to leave. The others were also ordered to

leave…The excitement of the soldiers is very great.”47 The Parkersburg State Journal reported

45 “Cabell County Circuit Court,” Parkersburg State Journal, April 4, 1865. 46 William F. Dusenberry. Carrie Eldridge Collection “Dusenberry Diaries,” May 24-25, 1865, Accession

1992/01.0551, Special Collections, James E. Morrow Library, Marshall University, Huntington, WV. 47 William F. Dusenberry. Carrie Eldridge Collection “Dusenberry Diaries,” May 25, 1865, Accession

1992/01.0551, Special Collections, James E. Morrow Library, Marshall University, Huntington, WV.

32

on the event personifying the county of Cabell as an old invalid woman who having been laid

low with rebellious fever for four years was assaulted in her own home by four rebel ruffians.48

The men later returned to the town, but the influence they had once had was now severally

weakened. However, not all was lost as many people’s desire for a return to normalcy was

already beginning to erode the animosity.

CABELL COUNTY DURING EARLY RECONSTRUCTION

On May 31, 1865, the Parkersburg State Journal reported on a mass meeting held in

Barboursville on May 20. Attending were some of the most influential loyal citizens of

Barboursville including Thomas Thornburg, Judge H.J. Samuels, and Rev. William McComas.

Speeches were given by McComas and Samuels, before some resolutions were adopted by those

in attendance. The most notable resolution was, “That it is the duty of every individual to lay

aside all malice, hatred, and ill will, and forgive all personal wrong and injuries growing out of

the war, and use every endeavor to unite and blend together in good will . . . the various elements

of society . . . and burying the past in oblivion.”49 These influential Cabell Countians called for a

return to normality and stability after four long years of conflict, and a desire to bury the hatchet.

However, the death of Rev. William McComas two weeks after this meeting was a severe blow

to a reconciliationist movement forming in the county. McComas had been widely influential

throughout the southern counties of West Virginia (including those with strong Confederate

sympathies).50 The county did not return to normalcy with the war’s end, but a new war was

beginning in the political halls of state and local governments. As ex-Confederates attempted to

48 Parkersburg State Journal, May 31, 1865. 49“Mass Meeting at Barboursville, West Virginia,” Parkersburg State Journal, May 31, 1865. 50“Sudden Death,” Parkersburg State Journal, June 14, 1865.

33

insert themselves back into their seats of local and state power, loyal union men switched tactics

and closed ranks to combat against growing reconciliationist support for a release from wartime

animosity.

A Fourth of July celebration in Guyandotte renewed tensions. As loyal citizens celebrated

throughout the streets “rebels and their sympathizers” remained “holed up” within their homes.51

While newspapers dismissed the curmudgeonly attitude of the former Confederates their reports

hinted at the possible continuation of conflict. “They [rebels]. . . boast that the Union people of

the County could not succeed with a celebration unless the traitors would condescend to cast

their mite in favor of an abolition Government.”52 As the rebels hinted, returning Confederates

throughout the state had never ceased fighting against the laws that rendered them non-citizens.

While some Union men had argued against the injustice of the test oath, there remained a

significant outcry against the former Confederates. Many Union troops remained in West

Virginia well past the end of hostilities to ensure that the laws of the new state government were

enforced and upheld. Loyalists in favor of reconciliationist policies such as amending the test

oath were worried about commerce and infrastructure. In a letter posted in the Ironton Weekly

Register on October 12, 1865, an individual identified only as “C.” lamented that townships were

unorganized, the free school system was not in operation, infrastructure was damaged and had

not been repaired, and in general stagnation had taken hold of public business.53 These

sentiments were held by many wealthy men in Cabell County who sought a return to prewar

levels of commercial activity. These men found willing cohorts in wealthy ex-Confederates who

51 “The 4th Celebrated at Guyandotte, West Va.” Parkersburg State Journal, July 19, 1865; “The Fourth Celebrated

at Guyandotte, West Virginia,” Ironton Weekly Register, July 27, 1865. 52 “The Fourth Celebrated at Guyandotte, West Virginia,” Ironton Weekly Register, July 27, 1865. 53 “Letter from West Virginia,” Ironton Weekly Register, October 12, 1865.

34

were more than happy to let bygones be bygones and to trade economic development in the

region in exchange for citizenship. Other reconciliationists saw a distinction between the leaders

and common soldiers of the Confederacy, and wished to shape the disfranchising amendment to

target wealthy and influential ex-Confederates. One of them was James Ferguson (the man who

believed that the rebels should be “hanged”) who ran for the House of Delegates against the

retired Union General John S. Witcher and was labeled derisively a “Copperhead.”54 Those who

had been labeled as “Copperheads” during the war were Northern Peace Democrats who had

been viewed as traitors and had wanted to settle issues with the Confederacy peacefully. The

newspaper’s labeling of Ferguson as a “Copperhead” was meant to illustrate his conciliatory

approach to returning Confederates and label him a traitor. In a mass Union meeting on April 19,

1866, Ferguson defended his actions believing that a modification was needed in the

disfranchising amendment in order to not persecute those who had followed these leaders into

rebellion.55 These concerns demonstrated the fracturing opinions of the loyalist side in peacetime

that soon lead to the return of rights to the ex-Confederates.

This fight over the disenfranchisement of ex-Confederates demonstrated the continuance

of conflict well after the firing had ceased. The number of ex-Confederates in the state made it

impossible for some towns to even conduct basic civil government.56 A Lewisburg registrar, Dr.

J.F. Caldwell, came to be known as “Old Scratch” for his prolific erasing of names off the voting

register, and was rumored to have once set the voting record to only seven people.57 The

54 “Return of Election,” Parkersburg State Journal, November 1, 1865. 55 “Proceedings of a Union Meeting at Cabell C.H., April 19th” Parkersburg State Journal, May 5, 1866. 56“Letter from West Virginia,” Ironton Weekly Register, October 12, 1865. 57 Otis Rice and Stephen W. Brown, West Virginia: A History, 2nd ed. (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky,

1993) 156-157.

35

elections of 1865 demonstrated the strength of the reconciliationist movement and the disregard

of ex-Confederates for the state laws. The election of Confederate Major Henry Mason Matthews

of Greenbrier County to the state Senate forced ardent loyalists to close ranks and proceeded to

bind up the fraying political cords of the state’s Republican Party. In Cabell County as in much

of the state, Republicans rehashed wartime messages and reminded their recalcitrant party

members of their unity during wartime. These measures were taken to bring back Ferguson and

those who had voted for him (at least a quarter of the voting men in the county), and to ensure

continued Republican solidarity. In August 1866, the Union men of Cabell County convened at

the courthouse to appoint nominees for the Union State Convention to be held on August 30.

Their resolutions reveal the effort to ensure unity among the Unionists. They endorsed the

government of Governor Arthur Boreman and of the former delegate John S. Witcher (who was

also a part of the convention), but came out strongly against the current policy of President

Andrew Johnson, who showed a reconciliatory policy toward ex-Confederates by signing

thousands of pardons for leading members of the Confederacy. However, just as important, the

convention resolved that “we are opposed in every form to conferring the elective franchise upon

persons of the African race.”58 The loyalist members remained ardently loyal to the Republican

Party, but made it clear that they were not in the radical wing of their party and were completely

opposed to the views of Thaddeus Stevens and Charles Sumner. Stevens and Sumner sought not

only to enfranchise African Americans, but also to pass civil rights legislation to protect them

from discrimination and persecution. By the time of the 1866 elections, the men of Cabell

County and many leading officials in the Republican Party reminded voters to “Remember the

58 “Proceedings of Union Convention in Cabell County,” Parkersburg State Journal, August 28, 1866.

36

Dead heroes of West Virginia and . . . remember that it is the murderers of those gallant spirits

for whom the conservatives of our state are now enlisted and are trying to place in power.”59

Cabell Countians apparently had not forgotten as they voted overwhelmingly for Governor

Arthur Boreman, who won re-election. The Republican victories continued sweeping former

Cabell County delegate John S. Witcher into the office of Secretary of State, B.D. McGinnis as

prosecuting attorney, and James Ferguson replacing his former rival, Witcher, as the new

delegate of Cabell County. Republicans maintained a firm hold of the county offices in the

following years of 1867 and 1868.

Many of the events that played out in Cabell County can best be illustrated by viewing

the greater conflict emerging within state politics. These events within the county were

representative of a steady trickle down of the consequences of Republican actions on the national

level, which had influenced state leaders, and which in turn changed the political environment at

the county level. Republicans had maintained a firm hold over state government by relying on

wartime measures such as the test oaths and disenfranchisement. These measures had allowed

them to sustain their political power after the war when it was clear there was strong support for

a conservative Democratic Party. In some counties over eighty-five percent of voters were not

allowed to vote due to these proscriptive methods.60 The state Republicans generally supported

the role of the Radical Republicans in their fight against Johnson, but as national Republicans

began to assert a more radical agenda with their calls for racial equality, many West Virginia

party members grew unsettled. Violence in several counties against proscription also played a

59 “Union Men, Remember the Dead Heroes of West Virginia, and Honor Them Next Thursday at the Polls,”

Parkersburg State Journal, October 24, 1866. 60 Rice and Brown, West Virginia, 157.

37

great part in the beginnings of a relaxed stance toward ex-Confederates. The election of 1868

showed that the Republican Party was starting to lose its edge despite proscription. In the closest

race for governor the state had seen so far, William E. Stevenson (Rep.) won the governorship in

a vote of 26,931 to 22,052 against his opponent, James N. Camden (Dem.). Cabell County had

voted for William Stevenson, by a majority of only 72 votes.61 If the similar number of voters

had been maintained as in the 1866 election, then out of 470 voters the vote had been very close

(even with many Confederates disenfranchised).62 This assertion is especially noteworthy when

it is recalled that there were almost 1500 registered voters before the war.

This election alarmed state Republicans, whose attempts to close ranks based on wartime

issues were splintering under the weight of the more radicalized agenda of the national party.

When the Republican-controlled Congress passed the Fifteenth amendment in February 1869,

West Virginia Republicans became even more divided over issues of suffrage. The alliance

based on wartime loyalty could not handle the growing fissures between businessmen who

supported economic policies that crossed party lines, loyal but racist party members who desired

ex-Confederates rather than enfranchise African Americans, and a growing number of war-weary

party members who grew disillusioned with continued efforts to continue wartime polices.

Cabell Countians demonstrated their growing disillusionment with the policies of the

state government. A letter written to the Cabell County Press on July 31, 1869, wondered aloud

why the state government had failed to select a register for the county since registering was to

commence by the first Monday in August. The author argued, “If the Radical party by the acts of

61 Parkersburg State Journal, October 10, 1868. 62 This vote count is taken from the number of votes for governor placed by Cabell County voters as seen in the

“Election Returns from Cabell, Mason, Boone, and Pocahontas Counties,” Parkersburg State Journal, November

14, 1866.

38

their Board of Registration have rendered the office so detestable to public opinion that no

radical can be found in the county . . . let the Governor appoint three honest Conservatives who

will lift the office from disgrace.”63 In September the registrar for Grant Township in Cabell

County had accepted registration for nine names that previous registrars had turned down for

being ex-Confederates. The names were released in the Cabell County Press and a call was

placed for information regarding how they had registered and under what law they acted.64 For

Cabell County Republicans the most damning turn came in October when former delegate Gen.

John S. Witcher publicly endorsed the overthrow of proscription. A former Union officer,

Witcher argued that former Federal troops and Confederate soldiers were now living together as

friends and neighbors with only politicians, “contending for place and power,” fighting the

battles of the late war.65 Witcher like many of those who were tired of war rhetoric, were

reinvigorating the reconciliationist movement in the state. This reconciliationist faction of

Republicans, much like wartime Republicans, were an alliance of various disillusioned party

members who balked at the radical measures of the party nationally and within the state. This

reconciliationist faction supported Democratic candidates who endorsed an end to proscription.

In the Cabell County election of 1869, these Republicans helped push the Democrats to a

narrow victory of 30 votes over Republican candidates.66 Although William Holstein, the

Republican candidate for the House of Delegates, said that he would vote against the Fifteenth

amendment, his stance on proscription doomed his chances of acquiring the support needed from

63 Cabell County Press, July 31, 1869. 64 Cabell County Press, September 6, 1869. 65 “A Letter from General Witcher,” Cabell County Press, October 9, 1869. 66 Cabell County Press, November 1, 1869; the election may not have been as close as perceived. According to the

editorial it seems that many Democrats had stayed away from the polls believing the victory for the Republicans a

sure thing.

39

Liberal Republicans. Democrats meanwhile selected a former Union veteran, Mitchell Cook, to

represent them. His unquestionable loyalty to the Union and his desire to let the war end by

stopping proscription swayed enough support from the Republican coalition. Cabell County

demonstrated that wartime patriotism and rhetoric was no longer a sufficient means to political

office.

Pressured from above by radical policies, and finding growing resentment from county

governments, the state government was left in a precarious position. Even strong pro-Unionist

members in Cabell County, like Gen. Witcher, were becoming more lenient in their views of the

former Confederates. Former delegate from Cabell County to the State Convention in 1863

Granville Parker published an article in the Cabell County Press advising, “I should in this

particular exigency, vote for the ratification, under the belief that its approval would be so

unanimous as to embody the popular will.”67 The state Republican Party knew that soon,

regardless of proscription, it was to be driven from power if this policy was not changed. Around

early August, outgoing governor Arthur Boreman wrote in a confidential letter to Craven Berry,

Esq., a member of the Braxton County Board of Registration,

I can say to you frankly that I agree with you that hasty enfranchisement would

put our state into the hands of those who have been its enemies, and from all I

have been able to learn a large majority of our union people are opposed to it, but

are willing to have these disabilities removed as soon as they deem it safe to do

so.68

67 Granville Parker, The Formation of the State of West Virginia and Other Incidents of the Late Civil War,

(Wellsburg: Glass & Son, 1875), 419-420. 68 Letter from Arthur Boreman to Craven Berry, Esq., n.d., Arthur Boreman Collection, Ar -1723, Folder #339, The

West Virginia State Archives, Cultural Center, Charleston, WV. The letter is written on the back of a paper used for

40

In an effort to stem the tide of resentment over the issue of proscription, the newly

elected Republican governor Stevenson advocated re-enfranchising ex-Confederates and

encouraged the legislature to move toward such a policy. It is perhaps telling of the whole

experience that Delegate William H.H. Flick, himself a Union veteran, drafted what became

known as the Flick Amendment. The amendment removed voting restrictions on over twenty

thousand ex-Confederates. Although four years of open hostility had brought both Unionists and

Confederate soldiers and sympathizers to the point of persecution, kidnapping, and murder,

Cabell Countians signaled their desire for the end of animosity. Many Union veterans had come

out and supported the policy of re-enfranchisement advocated by these reconciliationist

Republicans. The wartime alliances had broken under the tide of growing economic pressure

from businessmen eyeing the state’s natural resources, and a growing determination to maintain

the subordination of African Americans within the state. When faced with the alternatives, West

Virginians who had supported the Union found common political ground with their Confederate

opposites.

Cabell Countians, like their counterparts in the border states and throughout the South,

suffered wartime destruction firsthand. The prospective growth of the county had been halted,

then reversed, and had left many of the residents disenfranchised. It is no surprise to anyone that

wartime emotions and tensions did not end as soon as the war was over, but within the next four

years much of the animosity had already begun to recede into the background. With the

achievement of re-enfranchisement, former Confederates swept Democratic candidates into

Arthur Boreman’s notes for an unspecified Governor’s Proclamation. It is unknown whether he sent out the letter; it

appears as though the letter continues but the second or subsequent pages were not contained in the folder.

41

office and severely weakened the state Republican Party. This development signaled a

significant shift in the agenda of political officials as thoughts turned away from wartime

loyalties and toward expanding and developing an economic policy to encourage outside

investment into the new state. This new development brought significant changes to Cabell

County, as outside capitalists began to notice the strategic economic value of the region.

42

CHAPTER 2

THE BIRTH OF A CITY

While former Unionists and Confederates grappled politically over the legacies of the

war, the political and financial elite on both sides returned to business soon after the war ended.

Wealthy merchants and large landowners in Cabell County returned to pick up their businesses

and continued working toward substantial commercial development by improving upon the

economic opportunities within the region. The creation of Huntington in 1871 offered many

wealthy residents opportunities to expand beyond agriculture and invest in large-scale

commercial and industrial production. These wealthy elites were more concerned with financial

gain than sectional animosity, and as such were willing to deal with anyone regardless of their

wartime service. Politically, businessmen and industrialists could find common ground in turning

a profit from the natural resources within the new state of West Virginia. This emphasis on a

mutually beneficial economic policy offered both sides the potential of unprecedented levels of

wealth through cooperation. Northern businessmen, like Collis P. Huntington, moved to the

region and worked with local and state elites to create railroads and extractive industries. With

the end of the war Collis Huntington saw, like other entrepreneurs, the opportunity afforded by

the untapped natural resources within the state. The growth of the Chesapeake & Ohio (C&O)

Railroad and the town of Huntington worked hand in hand with the growing interest and

investment in extractive businesses linked to timber, coal, and oil. These developments affected

not only Cabell County, but the entire state and its government. As West Virginia politicians

grappled with the still lingering effects of the Civil War, the wheels were already turning in the

state capital for industry to take a proactive plan in setting public policy. Sectional animosity

thrived through heated contention between the Republican and Democratic Parties until the

43

ascension of Democratic supremacy in the state government by 1872. This animosity was

quickly supplanted by fighting between factions in the dominant Democratic Party over

economic policies and the development of industry in the state. However, the survival of

sectional animosity continued in local communities as former foes struggled to retain control

over the meaning and legacy of the war. It was here, in small local communities like Huntington,

that soldiers and those who lived through the war resisted the efforts of local and state leaders to

“forget” the Civil War and impose a reconciliation based on shared commercial prosperity.

Collis P. Huntington’s birth in the North along with his travels to the South and West

provide an important parallel to his role in Reconstruction. As a railroad builder, Huntington’s

railroads served as stitches for the wounded nation binding up old wounds to try to bring the

sections of the nation back together under the medicine of economic progress. He was born in

1821 in Harrington, Connecticut and journeyed to the South in his teens as a street peddler.

During the California Gold Rush, Huntington, like many young men, traveled west to make his

fortune. Unlike most of them, Huntington did make a fortune, by selling supplies to miners.

Huntington began working with railroads in the 1850s. He, along with three partners, was able to

raise enough funds to begin work on a railroad running eastward from California. This Central

Pacific railroad became the western section of the first transcontinental railroad in 1869, and

Huntington also completed work on a Southern Pacific railroad that extended from California to

New Orleans.

During the late 1860s, West Virginia and Virginia despite continued debate over West

Virginia’s stake in Virginia’s debt, had agreed that completing the Chesapeake and Ohio

Railroad was essential to ensuring economic opportunities for both states. In an 1867 meeting of

businessmen from Virginia and West Virginia who were raising money to build the railroad, it

44

was settled that each of the counties through which it was to pass must help pay for its

construction with Cabell County being given the second largest sum to raise ($300,000). It

became clear by 1868 that raising funds for the railroad was proving more difficult than expected

as only $3,599,000 had been raised out of an estimated five million dollars. Despite this lag in

fundraising, the company elected a new president and board of directors. The company directors

removed Edmund Fontaine as president, an ex-Confederate and typical Virginia gentleman, and

replaced him with General Williams Carter Wickham who shared all of the traits of his

predecessor but had become a Republican after the war.1

Wickham had heard of the completion of the monumental two railroads that Huntington

had completed and convinced Huntington to help the beleaguering Chesapeake and Ohio

Railroad. In 1869 Huntington became the president of the Chesapeake and Ohio Company. He

agreed to complete the railroad to the mouth of the Big Sandy River in three years. However

there was some early contention, as there was great anxiety over not only the completion of the

road by Northern industrialists, but of a fear of giving so much power and authority to a group

headquartered out of state. Supporters of the plan, however, believed that, “it was time to set

political differences aside, the majority of stockholders were not apprehensive about the possible

problems of Northern financial control, and they even suggested that the move would take the

organization of the road out of the influence of ever changing local politics.”2

1 Ronald Eller, “Mountain Road: A Study of the Construction of the Chesapeake and Ohio Railroad in Southern

West Virginia, 1863-1873,” (Thesis, University of North Carolina, 1973), 20-24. 2 Ibid, 27; Robert L. Archer, Robert L. Archer Collection “Chronicles of Early Huntington, 1871-1896,” Accession

530 (Manuscript 124), Special Collections, James E. Morrow Library, Marshall University, Huntington, WV; James

E. Casto, “Collis P. Huntington,” e-WV: The West Virginia Encyclopedia,

http://www.wvencyclopedia.org/articles/753, accessed March 20, 2016.

45

When Huntington took on the task of the Chesapeake and Ohio railroad, he was no doubt

aware of the extensive work that had already begun on the project. In 1850, the Virginia

Legislature passed an ordinance to change the name of the Louisa Railroad Company in Virginia

to the Central Virginia Railroad, and repurpose it to create a railroad that linked the Virginia

coast to the Ohio River Valley.3 Western Virginians had agitated for years for a means of access

out of the mountainous region to transport goods and resources. Although this act proved too late

in helping to bind the two regions of Virginia before the Civil War ripped them apart, it had

begun the process of creating an avenue through which to transport West Virginia’s natural

resources. The project was abandoned soon after the firing on Ft. Sumter, and was not resumed

until the passing of acts in both states in 1867 permitting its revival as the Chesapeake and Ohio

Railroad.4

These laws were in and of themselves significant for several reasons. First, the

cooperation between the two states came amidst bitter debate over the inclusion of Jefferson and

Berkeley counties within West Virginia and settlement of West Virginia’s portion of the Virginia

state debt. Secondly, these actions recognized the legitimacy of the Virginia state government at

a time when Congress did not since it had not ratified the 14th Amendment. Finally, these actions

demonstrated the desire for state and local politicians in West Virginia to look past sectional

animosity and wartime issues in order to create new economic opportunities and expand

infrastructure within the new state.

3George Seldon Wallace, Cabell Annals and Families (Richmond: Garret & Massie, Publishers. 1935), 125-127. 4 Otis Rice and Stephen W. Brown, West Virginia: A History, 2nd ed. (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky,

1993) 185.

46

Not all West Virginians were awestruck by the promise of prosperity that outside

industrialists lauded. Granville Parker outlined some issues in an editorial to the Wheeling Daily

Intelligencer where he cautiously warned of the danger posed by such reckless pursuit of foreign

investment without implementing state oversight of the company. He argued that “if it shall be

built, it will be controlled by a Company likely to possess three times the power possessed by the

Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, which has ever since our State was created, set our laws at

defiance, with entire impunity.”5 However, these cries were not enough to dissuade the state’s

leading investors or the average citizen.

Soon after acquiring the railroad, Huntington toured its potential course. Huntington

historians Robert Archer and George Seldon Wallace describe how Huntington and his travelling

party of brother-in-law and business partner, D.W. Emmons, General Wickham, and a

representative of the banking firm Fisk & Hatch were amazed at the beautiful land on the south

bank of the Ohio and west of the Guyandotte River.6 Huntington determined that here on this

stretch of land, the western terminus of the Chesapeake and Ohio Railroad was to be built.

These historians tell a story filled with romantic destiny and idealism, but the truth was

probably far more pragmatic. Huntington knew of the commercial opportunities afforded by the

two rivers as they had been for decades a primary influence on the early industrial and

commercial growth of the region. Huntington already envisioned the connections this railroad

might make and saw the enormous financial windfall that might arise from opening up the area

5 Granville Parker, The Formation of the State of West Virginia and Other Incidents of the Late Civil War

(Wellsburg: Glass & Son, 1875), 326. 6 Robert L. Archer, Robert L. Archer Collection “Chronicles of Early Huntington, 1871-1896,” Accession 530

(Manuscript 124), Special Collections, James E. Morrow Library, Marshall University, Huntington, WV; George

Seldon Wallace, Huntington Through Seventy-Five Years (Huntington: n.p.,1947) 9-10.

47

to the railroad. Many of the state’s natural resources could flow out through this area, and on into

factories in Ohio. By owning the land and encouraging industry to move to the area, Huntington

then controlled not only the railroad but also the means in which to turn those raw materials into

goods to ship back along his own railroads. An article appearing in the Cabell County Press

described all these considerations for the future site of the city and determined it to be the most

ideal location along the Ohio River for such a terminus.7 Huntington had not become one of the

most wealthy railroad tycoons by passing up such an opportunity.

Huntington commissioned “Col.” Delos W. Emmons (the title was a nickname; Emmons

had never served in the military) to begin work collecting titles to the land around his proposed

western terminus. Emmons contracted local lawyer, Albert Laidley, a former Confederate, and

together they bought out over twenty farms for the proposed site. Some of Huntington’s most

influential first families were among the landowners who sold their land to Laidley, who then

sold it to the Central Land Company. Some of these landowners included the town’s first mayor

P.C. Buffington; the first treasurer, J. Harvey Poage; Judge W. H. Hagen; W.P. Holderby;

Charles Everett; and John Laidley. Rufus Cook was hired to lay out most of the future city, and

the sale of lots began earnestly in the winter of 1871-1872.8

While many of the local elite were pleased with the new town, there were apparently

some grumblings about what it might mean for the region. Huntington was revitalizing the

commercial economy of the county, and Cabell Countians had voted in support of a railroad in

7 “The Railroad Terminus,” Cabell County Press, February 28, 1870. 8 Robert L. Archer, Robert L. Archer Collection “Chronicles of Early Huntington, 1871-1896,” Accession 530

(Manuscript 124), Special Collections, James E. Morrow Library, Marshall University, Huntington, WV

48

1867 along with the rest of the state.9 At the time, Granville Parker cautiously mused in a post

script on his letter to the Wheeling Daily Intelligencer:

Could our legislators have realized, when they voted for the Chesapeake and Ohio

Railroad bill, that they were authorizing the mammoth company to purchase and

hold, for ten years after the completion of their road, one-third of all the land

comprised in the State? . . . And all this land to be exempted from taxation until

the State shall be able to prove that the Company is realizing ten per cent. on its

capital. . . We can hardly afford to be thus liberal to foreign capitalists.10

Parker’s caution had merit. The Baltimore and Ohio railroad had, since the creation of West

Virginia, openly balked at state regulations and tax measures.11 The vast benefits offered to the

Chesapeake and Ohio may incite the company to build the railroad, but deprive the state of a vast

swath of tax revenue for the perceived hope that the railroad might bring outside capital into the

state. Parker’s cautious article came amidst a time of continued debate over the nature of

Confederate disenfranchisement and issues surviving the war. The desire for a railroad that ran

across the state had been around since before the Civil War, and after the war the need was ever

more apparent. The lawmakers’ enticing deal was a shortsighted measure to ensure the

construction of a railroad. However, for Cabell Countians there appeared to be little worry about

generous concessions to the C&O railroad. Swept away by promises of an industrial powerhouse

built upon the shores of the Ohio, many residents eagerly welcomed the C&O.

9 “R.R. Election in Cabell County,” Parkersburg State Journal, October 2, 1867. 10 Granville Parker, The Formation of the State of West Virginia, 323. 11 Ibid, 326.

49

When the fine details were being worked on, however, there appears to have been some

contention on Mr. Huntington’s choice. In a series of letters posted in the Cabell County Press

two individuals named “Native” and “Citizen” argued over the ideal site for the railroad

terminus: Maple Grove or Guyandotte.12 Native argued that the site of Maple Grove offered

more reasonable rates for land, the advantage of fewer landowners to buy from, and access to a

narrower portion of the Ohio River, which made bridge-building easier. Citizen countered by

saying that Guyandotte had the best harbor “unsurpassed by any for a hundred miles up and

down the Ohio River,” and had the advantage of its connection to the Guyandotte River that had

already been used for decades to haul natural resources out of the state.13 Although Guyandotte

boasted such advantages, from an article by the editor of the Press, George Creel, Huntington

had already set about purchasing land near and around the small community of Maple Grove.14

Many of the local elites had already sold much of the land to Huntington through his

representative D.W. Emmons and local lawyer Albert Laidley, and some even retained land in

the heart of the city (no doubt hoping the price for this land might increase exponentially). This

development shows that many of the local elites cooperated with the railroad in order to advance

their own interests in the new city, and to expand from a largely agricultural area with some

manufacturing to a growing industrial center. Large landowners were shifting their focus towards

accommodating the industrial demands that many believed might flock to the region as soon as

the railroad was complete. An article in the Huntington Argus in 1873 simply titled, “Our Duty,”

reflected the prevailing attitude toward the region’s recent growth “Manufactories is what we

12 “The Railroad Terminus,” Cabell County Press, February 14, 1870; “The Railroad Terminus,” Cabell County

Press, February 21, 1870; “The Railroad Terminus,” Cabell County Press, February 28, 1870. 13 “The Railroad Terminus,” Cabell County Press, February 28, 1870. 14 Cabell County Press, March 7, 1870.

50

need and must have . . . If we wish to prosper we must bestir ourselves . . . We must also build

workshops of various kinds . . . thereby showing to the outside capitalist that we are an

enterprising people and are determined to make Huntington an important and prosperous

place.”15

The first city council of Huntington was comprised of wealthy residents, and by viewing

the connections of the city’s first mayor, P.C. Buffington, one can begin to see the

interconnections of business, politics, and veteran service. P.C. Buffington along with his son,

Edward Stanford Buffington (later Huntington’s sixth mayor), served in the Confederate Army:

P.C. Buffington as a Quartermaster officer and Edward as an officer after graduating from the

Virginia Military Institute. P.C. Buffington’s sister was also the wife of fellow councilman Judge

W. H. Hagen. When the town of Huntington was being mapped out, Collis P. Huntington

commissioned Albert Laidley (himself a veteran and delegate for Cabell County in the Virginia

General Assembly during the Civil War) to acquire the lands along the southern bank of the

Ohio.16 The land encompassed seventeen farms, six of which belonged to the Buffington family:

four belonged to P.C.’s younger brothers, James H., Dr. John N., and Henry; P.C. Buffington

owned the other two.17 P.C. Buffington also owned the land near Marshall Academy, and held

onto it until his death in 1875.18 (see Pictures 2.1, 2.2, 2.3) He was also elected the first president

of

15 Robert L. Archer, Robert L. Archer Collection “Chronicles of Early Huntington, 1871-1896,” Accession 530

(Manuscript 124), Special Collections, James E. Morrow Library, Marshall University, Huntington, WV. 16 Wallace, Cabell County Annals and Families, 35-36. Albert Laidley was also one of the first recorded people who

took the oath of allegiance before the Provost Marshall in Charleston, West Virginia, near the close of the war. 17 Ibid, 170. 18 Rufus Cook, Huntington, Cabell County, West Virginia [map], 1000 feet per inch. 1871; J.L. Thornburg, Map of

Addition No.1 and Changes in Huntington, Cabell County, West Virginia: Supplement to the Map of Huntington

made by Rufus Cook [map], 100 feet per inch, July 9, 1880; J.L. Thornburg, Map of Addition No.2 and Changes in

Huntington, Cabell County, West Virginia: Second Supplement to the Map of Huntington made by Rufus Cook

51

the fledgling Bank of Huntington, the first bank in the city.19 P.C. Buffington left a lasting

impact on the burgeoning town; soon after his passing Buffington Avenue was created on land

formerly owned by him near Marshall College.20

For several of the councilmen no records exist of their involvement in either side of the

Civil War, but those who did serve were largely Confederate. J. Harvey Poage, treasurer, Judge

W. H. Hagen, councilman, and Lewis H. Burks, assessor, also sold land to Collis P.

Huntington for the creation of his new town. Although there are no records of these men serving

in the Confederate army, neither did they serve in the Union army. Edward S. Holderby,

councilman, did not serve in the Confederacy but his brother William P. Holderby did and was

one of the landowners bought out by Huntington. Edward also had an uncle and three cousins

(two were killed during the war) who fought for the Confederacy. Charles Everett was a

Confederate and served time in a Wheeling prisoner of war camp.21 The only Union veteran on

the council was General John Hunt Oley, the recorder. Oley had served as a major in a regiment

he had raised in Charleston in 1861 and served throughout the war eventually becoming a

brigadier general. After the war, he moved back to his home state of New York and became

close associates with Collis P. Huntington. Although Oley was the only Union veteran on the

[map], 100 feet per inch, 1880. All of these maps can be found in the Huntington Map Drawer located in Special

Collections, James E. Morrow Library, Marshall University, Huntington, WV. The maps demonstrate the level of

land ownership held by leading individuals within the new town. The addendum maps demonstrate how P.C.

Buffington’s land was utilized after he passed away in 1875. The new layout of the land was matched to conform to

the style of the city outlined by Rufus Cook. 19 Rick Baumgartner, First Families of Huntington (Huntington: Rick Baumgartner, 1977), 35. 20 Charles Moffat, Marshall University: An Institution Comes of Age, 1837-1980 (Huntington: Marshall University

Alumni Association, 1980), 13-14. 21 Carrie Eldridge, Torn Apart: How Cabell Countians Fought the Civil War (Chesapeake: Carrie Eldridge, 2000)

27.

52

Picture 2.1 Map of Huntington 1871: The map created by Rufus Cook detailing the

organization of lots to be sold to future residents. The map also details several tracts of land still

owned by private landowners within the town. Notable landowners include Peter C. Buffington,

Edward Holderby, and James H. Poage. This map courtesy of Special Collections Department,

James E. Morrow Library, Marshall University, Huntington, WV.

53

Picture 2.2 Map of Huntington 1872 Addition No.1: The first addition map to the Rufus Cook,

1871 map illustrates the added land from purchases made along Peter C. Buffington’s land in the

middle of Huntington. The additions connect between Sixth Avenue and Eight Avenue and

Sixteenth Street and Twentieth Street. This map courtesy of Special Collections Department,

James E. Morrow Library, Marshall University, Huntington, WV.

54

Picture 2.3 Map of Huntington 1872 Addition No.2: The second addition map to the Rufus

Cook, 1871 map illustrates the continued addition of lots around the land of landowner, Peter C.

Buffington. It details the additions between Third Avenue and Seventh Avenue and Sixteenth

Street and Twentieth Street. It is notable that one of the added avenues to the area was named

Buffington Avenue. This map courtesy of Special Collections Department, James E. Morrow

Library, Marshall University, Huntington, WV.

55

council, he was so well liked that he was known as the “first citizen of Huntington.”22 It is

important to note here, that with the creation of Huntington there represented a balance between

the mostly Confederate local elites (the Buffingtons, Holderby, Everett, Laidley, Burks, Poage,

Hagan) and the symbolically Union representation of the railroad company (Huntington and

Emmons did not serve in the war but remained within the U.S., and Oley the U.S. major

general). These former foes were now able to set aside their animosity to work toward the

creation of the town and ensure the success of the railroad and the industry that was to follow in

its wake. This cooperation demonstrates the ability of industrialism and economic opportunity to

mitigate the sectional animosity that lingered after the war.

Cabell County saw this balance tested, and although sectional memory of the war

remained it became largely overshadowed by the cooperative development of industry. Cabell

County was going through a transition from a largely agriculture driven economy to one centered

on industrial development and the railroad center in Huntington. It had benefited from access to

the Ohio and Guyandotte Rivers, and had grown through its development of commercial

agriculture. The election of Huntington’s mayors provides one example of the continued debate

over the economic issue of agriculture and industrialism, and demonstrates the debate’s ability to

blur the lines of sectional identities. Peter C. Buffington, one of the most influential large

landowners in the county and an ex-Confederate, was the first mayor. Thomas J. Burke, another

large landowner and ex-Confederate, succeeded him and was affiliated with various early local

businesses. Next, M.G. Nichols, elected mayor in 1876, was wharf master of the Chesapeake and

Ohio Railroad Company landing and demonstrated early attempts at industrial political

22 Baumgartner, First Families of Huntington, 37-38.

56

maneuvering on the local level. Thomas Burke was reelected after Nichols to another term. E.A.

Bennet, mayor of 1885-86, was a Union veteran, a contrast to the many ex-Confederate mayors,

but all were businessmen who stood to profit from the growth in the region. Although

Huntington and the effects of the Chesapeake and Ohio Railroad are largely sidelined in favor of

discussion of Johnson N. Camden and Henry G. Davis’ more influential impact on state politics,

the development of the town and its industry provided early momentum for industrialists.23

Huntington’s early development centered on its ability to attract new industry. The

railroad was not completed until late in 1872 and the first train did not pass through until January

29, 1873. But Huntington appeared to be on a promising path as industries like the Ensign

Manufacturing Company were already moving to the region. However, the Financial Panic of

1873 put an immediate halt to local growth, and an epidemic of smallpox in the fall of 1872

caused concerns over municipal health and public safety.24 The council created a board of public

health and a fire department in order to allay these concerns. The city physician was elected by

1873 and a hook and ladder company was created that same year. The foreman for the hook and

ladder company was Thomas Sikes, a former colonel in the Union army. By 1875, the mayor

organized a public meeting for the creation of another fire company that was to be called the

Excelsior Fire Company. This new company elected as its foreman, Eustace Gibson, a former

captain in the Confederate Army and now practicing attorney.25 Both companies competed for

business and the city’s budget for several years. Many leading officials in the city council spent

23 Robert L. Archer, Robert L. Archer Collection “Chronicles of Early Huntington, 1871-1896,” Accession 530

(Manuscript 124), Special Collections, James E. Morrow Library, Marshall University, Huntington, WV; Rice and

Brown, West Virginia, 165-204. 24 Wallace, Cabell County Annals and Families, 174, 245. 25 Ibid, 178-179.

57

time as one of the firefighters assigned by the two companies, several including Sam Gideon and

W. Gibson, were Union veterans. Others, such as Frank B. Enslow, H.C. Simms, and J.K. Oney

had strong business connections to Confederate veterans such as Eustace Gibson.26

During the 1870s there was a significant increase of population in Cabell County, but

there remained anxiety over whether the town was going to succeed. Eller points out that in the

counties involved with the C&O railroad, a population increase of 17% had occurred in 1860

compared to a 40% increase during the 1870s.27 However, by 1872 Huntington had a population

of fewer than 1,000 people, and grew slowly until the beginning of the 1880s as the town grew

more commercially viable, accelerating further and reaching a population of 10,000 by 1890.28

Although veterans from both sides held powerful municipal positions early on, the success of the

city was more important than lingering feelings from the Civil War. Businesses were encouraged

by leading members of the C&O railroad, such as D.W. Emmons, to flock to the town. An

advertisement he designed was submitted to the local newspaper, the Huntington Independent,

discussing the future of Huntington and the many amenities it offered. The advertisement, also

passed around in a pamphlet form, listed the city’s strategic position along navigable rivers, and

the value of the Chesapeake and Ohio Railroad as the bridge linking the east into the railroad

trunks of the west. The advertisement lauded the manufacturing capabilities of the town citing its

proximity to iron beds, coalfields, and timber. Adding to its mineral wealth the pamphlet

discussed the potential of the city’s commercial opportunities at the crossroads of the “great

26 Ibid, 179. 27 Eller, “Mountain Road,” 59. 28Baumgartner, First Families of Huntington, 30; James Casto, “Huntington,” e-WV: The West Virginia

Encyclopedia, May 30, 2013, accessed December 15, 2015.

58

staples of the West,” along with the “manufacturing States of the East and of Europe.”29 Finally,

the pamphlet mentioned that, “as a place of residence, no more inviting locality can be found

than the City of Huntington,” illustrating its good-natured residents and beautiful amenities.30

The development of Huntington was slowed early on due to a concern over the future

success of the C&O railroad and a lack of capital caused by the financial Panic of 1873. Eller

explains that early on in 1873, Huntington was not sure that coal was a viable source of revenue

for the railroad. “Huntington hesitated to develop long feeder lines during the depression of the

seventies and concentrated his efforts on extending the main termini instead.”31 Huntington’s

idea was to complete a full transcontinental railroad in which he owned the lines that fed from

the East Coast to the West Coast. He also wanted the development of Huntington to proceed

more quickly as he had invested heavily in its growth. Huntington utilized money he had

acquired through the C&O to purchase the property that became Huntington, and had divested

that land to the Central Land Company of which he was president. According to Eller,

Huntington utilized many of his resources from the C&O to inflate the values of land in

Huntington and other towns in order to turn a large profit upon the completion of the railroad.32

In effect, many of the early difficulties surrounding Huntington occurred due to the desire for

increased profits by some of the leading Northern backers of the town. For many local residents,

even those not involved in land speculation, there remained many opportunities for wealth by

getting in on the ground floor of the enterprise. These early years saw the creation of many long-

29 Delos W. Emmons, “The City of Huntington on the Ohio River,” in Miscellaneous Papers, Huntington Maps

Drawer, Special Collections, James E. Morrow Library, Marshall University, Huntington, WV. 30 Ibid. 31 Eller, “Mountain Road,”62. 32 Ibid, 73-85.

59

lived businesses, and also demonstrated early difficulties that kept investors anxious about future

success.

A map of the city in 1873 lists several notable businesses and veterans from both sides

owned many of them.33 (See Picture 2.4) Sam Gideon an immigrant from Germany who owned a

clothing store, H. C. Parsons, an official of the Chesapeake and Ohio Railroad, and O.G. Chase,

the proprietor of the first Huntington newspaper the Huntington Independent were all Union

men.34 Eustace Gibson, an attorney from Virginia, and Thomas J. Burke, a real estate agent who

owned a store that sold liquor, wine, and cigars, were new arrivals who had served as

Confederate soldiers.35 John Hooe Russel, a wholesale grocer, was not a veteran but had lived in

Alabama during the war and his plantation home “Russel Hill” had been burned to the ground by

General Sherman in 1864.36 The most interesting example is the law firm of Ferguson and

Harvey. James Ferguson, who once had furiously claimed of rebels that every “devil of them

ought to be hung,” now worked alongside Thomas H. Harvey, a former Confederate soldier.37 It

is impossible to tell how much of the cooperative sentiment pervaded the new town, but

Ferguson’s example appears to show that hard-line Unionists were able to put aside their

33 M. Wood White, “Huntington.” Map. In White's New County and District Atlas of the State of West Virginia.

Comprising Fifty-four Counties; Three Hundred and Twenty-seven Township Districts; and Two Thousand Five

Hundred and Sixty-seven School Districts. From the Most Recent Surveys and Authentic Sources., 58. Series 28.

Grafton, WV: M. Wood White, 1873. Accessed December 15, 2015.

http://www.davidrumsey.com/luna/servlet/detail/RUMSEY~8~1~28430~1120364:Huntington-

?sort=Pub_List_No_InitialSort,Pub_Date,Pub_List_No,Series_No&qvq=q:Huntington;sort:Pub_List_No_InitialSort

,Pub_Date,Pub_List_No,Series_No;lc:RUMSEY~8~1&mi=123&trs=183 34Baumgartner, First Families of Huntington, 10, 17-18; U.S. Department of the Interior, National Park Service,

Soldiers and Sailors Database, “Owen G. Chase,” https://www.nps.gov/civilwar/search-soldiers-

detail.htm?soldierId=50DBA78C-DC7A-DF11-BF36-B8AC6F5D926A, accessed April 14, 2016. 35 Baumgartner, First Families of Huntington, 38-39; Jack Dickinson and Mark Meadows, eds. A History of Camp

Garnett, United Confederate Veterans: UCV Camp #902 at Huntington, WV (Huntington: n.p., 1987); J.N. Potts and

John Henry Cammack, eds. Huntington (West Virginia) Directory For 1891-1892 (Hamilton: Hamilton Publishing

Co., 1892. 36 Baumgartner, First Families of Huntington, 35. 37“Cabell County Circuit Court,” Parkersburg State Journal, April 4, 1865.

60

differences many years after the conflict. On July 20, 1872, the Huntington Argus published an

article titled “What Huntington Needs.” In the article W.F. Wallace, the Argus editor, wrote,

“One of the first things needed is what is called in the military company esprit du’ corps; a

feeling which binds the citizens together . . . and there should be no distinction between those

from different sections . . . no man who has the interest of this place at heart will speak one word

to revive old prejudices between the sections.”38

Another article in the Huntington Advertiser several years later reflected this call for an

end to animosity. It mentioned the arrival of the “Stonewall Jackson Band” and called for several

old Union Civil War companies (The Lincoln Rangers, Logan Wildcats, Cabell Regulars, and

Wayne Mounted Infantry) to meet the band they had faced during wartime. The article

concluded with another refrain to the end of sectional prejudice proclaiming, “Let us bury and

forget all sectional and party prejudices and have a harmonious and happy time on that day.”39

These articles demonstrate along with Ferguson’s example the pervading sentiment that sectional

identity should be forgotten in order to focus on expanding and enriching the new city of

Huntington.

EARLY BUSINESS AND INDUSTRIES

For most of the 1870s and into the 1880s, residents took this message to heart and

worked toward creating an appealing site for businesses to relocate. One of the earliest

businesses was the Ensign Manufacturing Company incorporated in 1871 with the capital of over

38 W.F. Wallace, “What Huntington Needs,” Huntington Argus, July 20, 1872. 39 O.G. Chase, “The Glorious Fourth,” Huntington Advertiser, June 29, 1876.

61

Picture 2.4 Map of Huntington 1873 with Huntington Businesses: This map created two

years after Huntington was incorporated details some of the earliest records of businesses

originating in the area. Notable inclusions are Sam Gideon (Union veteran), O. G. Chase (Union

veteran), John Hunt Oley (Union veteran), J. G. Breslin (Union veteran), Thomas J. Burke

(Confederate veteran), Eustace Gibson (Confederate veteran). This map courtesy of Special

Collections Department, James E. Morrow Library, Marshall University, Huntington, WV.

62

$60,000 and a senator from Connecticut, W.H. Barnum, as president.40 The Ensign

Manufacturing Company employed 70 people when it first opened in 1872 with a stock of $10 a

share; by 1881 the stock soared to over $100 a share.41 It had originally been the idea of Ely

Ensign, a friend of Collis P. Huntington’s from Connecticut, who utilized his networking with

Huntington and fellow industrialist William H. Barnum, to build his car manufacturing company

in Huntington.42 Although Barnum remained the president of the company until his death in

1889, Ensign managed the company at its location in Huntington. By 1881, Ensign made the

fateful decision to begin production of full rail cars and expanded the business which brought the

company national attention as a leading designer of wooden cars.43 The company’s expansion

brought more jobs to the area, and became one of the lifeblood industries of Huntington. This

factory later expanded into the American Car & Foundry Company. Ensign and the Chesapeake

and Ohio Railroad built dozens of affordable houses for their workers. This move by the two

companies helped to demonstrate the appeal of the new city not just to business owners but to

laborers who were desperately needed for the businesses the city hoped to attract. In a speech

given for the celebration of the first railroad to enter Huntington, “General” J.S. Breslin

mentioned the need to encourage this immigration. He explained:

If we wish to prosper we must bestir ourselves . . . We must also build workshops

of various kinds, and comfortable tenement houses for the accommodation of the

40 Robert L. Archer, Robert L. Archer Collection “Chronicles of Early Huntington, 1871-1896,” Accession 530

(Manuscript 124), Special Collections, James E. Morrow Library, Marshall University, Huntington, WV; Wallace,

Cabell County Annals and Families, 205. 41 Jack Dickinson, Ely Ensign and the Ensign Manufacturing Company of Huntington, West Virginia: Forerunner of

American Car & Foundry (ACF) (Huntington: John Deaver Drinko Academy for the American Political Institution

and Civic Culture, 2013), 42. 42 Ibid, 29-36. 43 Ibid, 40-43.

63

mechanics and laborer, thereby showing to [sic] the outside capitalist that we are

an enterprising people and are determined to make Huntington an important and

prosperous place, and thus induce them to come here and invest their money; and

by so doing aid us in building up our young and promising city.44

This advertising campaign encouraged immigration to the area. Although the city’s population

remained relatively small for its first decade, immigration brought together a great variety of

people from both sections to West Virginia (mostly people from the Midwest, along with those

from Virginia, Pennsylvania, and New England).45

Other prominent businesses such as the First National Bank of Huntington and the

Central Land Company fostered speculation by offering reduced rates for land and access to a

large supply of startup capital. The Central Land Company offered the early industries of the

Chesapeake and Ohio Railroad, and the Ensign Manufacturing Company the discounted lands

that served to house their employees. Without the cooperation of the Central Land Company and

the connections of the First National Bank of Huntington it is unclear whether some of these

early industries could have survived the Panic of 1873. The First National Bank’s board of

directors encompassed many of the leading citizens of the city. P.C. Buffington was elected the

44 Robert L. Archer, Robert L. Archer Collection “Chronicles of Early Huntington, 1871-1896,” Accession 530

(Manuscript 124), Special Collections, James E. Morrow Library, Marshall University, Huntington, WV. 45 Ibid; In the section of his manuscript, “Chronicles of Early Huntington,” Robert Archer recalls the composite

population of the town as comprising many residents who had traveled to the city from many states but most hailing

from Virginia, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and New England. While we have no statistics of how much of the city was

made up by non-native West Virginians this claim does backs up information I have come across from many of the

leading figures in Huntington coming from outside the state. General John Hunt Oley was originally from New York

as was Delos W. Emmons and Bradley W. Foster, Sam Gideon was from Germany and later moved to Illinois

before arriving in Huntington, William F. Wallace editor of the Huntington Argus was from Pennsylvania, John

Hooe Russel from Alabama, Henry C. Parsons, real estate agent in Huntington, was from Vermont, Andrew Jackson

Enslow the city’s first street commissioner was from Virginia as well as Eustace Gibson and Major William S.

Downer, Ely Ensign was born in Connecticut along with the founder of Huntington, Collis P. Huntington.

64

first president of the company with John Hooe Russel, John N. Buffington, D.W. Emmons, J.H.

Poage, W.H. Hagen, B.W. Foster and Robert T. Oney as board members. The company was

started with a capital of $25,000 and helped to finance several local businesses.46

These companies gave added prestige to the fledgling town, and demonstrated the

capacity for the city to grow exponentially and convince visitors to become residents. While this

growth did not occur as rapidly as local leaders may have liked, the promise of economic

opportunity was attracting laborer and entrepreneur alike. Young men and women came to the

city believing in its promise of economic opportunity and generous community. One was

Gustavus Northcott, son of Union veteran General Robert S. Northcott, who came to the city in

the mid-1880s and partnered with Heath Kelley to start a clothing store for gentlemen’s

furnishings. Thanks to Kelley’s familial connections (his sister was married to the wealthy life

insurance agent, Edward Bliss Enslow). Gustavus was able to ingratiate himself with the wealthy

leading men of the city.47 Mike and Julius Broh, much like Gustavus Northcott, were the sons of

a Civil War veteran, Confederate Corporal Adolph Broh. After the war, Adolph Broh opened a

tailoring business and in 1887 sent his two sons to manage the new store opening in Huntington.

The boys were very successful in operating their father’s clothing store, and became friends with

competitor and Union veteran, Sam Gideon. Mike Broh even married Sam Gideon’s daughter

Ida. Their father eventually moved to the city as well and was an active member of Camp

Garnett, the local Huntington chapter of the United Confederate Veterans national

organization.48 Another new resident in 1887 was Dr. William P. Walker. Walker was a Baptist

46 Wallace, Cabell County Annals and Families, 205; Baumgartner, First Families of Huntington, 15. 47 Baumgartner, First Families of Huntington, 28. 48 Ibid, 32-33.

65

preacher in Williamstown, West Virginia, and was invited to preach at the Fifth Avenue Baptist

Church, which had never had an appointed preacher. Walker was invited by some of the most

influential congregation members including J.N. Potts, H.D. Stewart, Thomas J. Burke

(Huntington’s second Mayor), and W.S. Downer. All of these men, including Dr. Walker, were

Confederate veterans and several of them including Burke, Potts, Downer, and Walker led and

were active members of the Camp Garnet United Confederate Veterans organization.49

Unfortunately for historians, much of what is known about the presence of Union

veterans in the city comes from Confederate or scattered and incomplete sources. Despite the

scarcity of sources, there are some clues that can help demonstrate how large their presence was

in the city. On December 18, 1888, the Grand Army of the Republic (G.A.R.) Department of

West Virginia sent out its General Orders #8 noting that it had 2,592 members in the state in

good standing, with 879 members suspended.50 Although about one-fourth of the total

membership of the organization in the state was in arrears, there were 3,471 members by this

year with at least 94 separate posts throughout the state. By 1908, pictures 2.5 and 2.6

demonstrate there was a resoundingly large parade devoted to the G.A.R. veterans in the city. By

1915, the organization still retained over 75 members in Huntington, and was the third largest

post in the entire Department of West Virginia.51 The strength of their presence within

49 Ibid, 30-31. 50 Thomas A. Maulsby, “General Orders, No. 8,” Grand Army of the Republic, Department of West Virginia

Collection, Ms 80-7, The West Virginia State Archives, Cultural Center, Charleston, WV. Huntington’s Bailey Post

is not listed among the posts with missing dues. We can infer that the organization was probably well run and

maintained. 51 Grand Army of the Republic, “Roster of Department of West Virginia, G.A.R., 1915,” Grand Army of the

Republic, Department of West Virginia, Ms 80-7, The West Virginia State Archives, Cultural Center, Charleston,

WV.

66

Huntington emerged as the growing popularity of the movement spread in the late 1870s and

80s.

The Grand Army of the Republic was a Union veterans’ organization that had sprung up

soon after the end of the war. On April 6, 1866, the first G.A.R. organization was formed in

Decatur, Illinois and by the end of the year it held its first national encampment. The

organization was formed to preserve the comradeship of wartime, give aid to soldiers’ widows

and orphans, fight for pension benefits, and honor and preserve the memory of their fallen

comrades. The group was nonpolitical but had an overwhelmingly Republican bias and often

became a powerful bloc of the Republican Party. At its peak in 1890 the organization had over

400,000 members.52 It is unknown when the Huntington G.A.R. post formed, but its presence

was already significant by 1891. That year, Huntington G.A.R., Bailey Post no. 5, was important

enough to host the state encampment with the principal speaker being former president

Rutherford B. Hayes.53 The Bailey Post seems to have originated sometime before 1887.

Of what little is known about the Huntington G.A.R. it is clear that Sam Gideon was its

most successful and recognizable member. Gideon, owner of the most successful clothing store

in the city, was also a Union veteran and former city council member. Gideon had run for mayor

of the city in 1879 but had lost to the son of former Mayor Peter C. Buffington, Dr. Edward S.

After securing the work of the Huntington Water Company, the company offered the

52 “Grand Army of the Republic”. 2016. In The Columbia Encyclopedia. New York: Columbia University Press,

https://musso.marshall.edu/cas/login?service=http%3A%2F%2Fliterati.credoreference.com%2Fcontent%2Fentry%2

Fcolumency%2Fgrand_army_of_the_republic%2F0, accessed April 14, 2016; David Blight, Race and Reunion, 171. 53 Robert L. Archer, Robert L. Archer Collection “Chronicles of Early Huntington, 1871-1896,” Accession 530

(Manuscript 124), Special Collections, James E. Morrow Library, Marshall University, Huntington, WV.

67

Picture 2.5 Photograph of Grand Army of the Republic Parade 1: An early photograph of the

1908 G.A.R. Reunion parade held in the city of Huntington, WV. The parade route appears to

have come up 8th St. and turned down 5th Ave. in front of the courthouse. Located within the

Cabell-Wayne Historical Society, “Parades and Celebrations,” Accession 1975/06.0099 at

Marshall University. This photo courtesy of the Special Collections Department, James E.

Morrow Library, Marshall University, Huntington, WV.

Picture 2.6 Photograph of Grand Army of the Republic Parade 2: Another photograph

showcasing the G.A.R. Reunion parade of 1908. It shows the parade traveling down 3rd Ave.

where it would turn up 8th St. Located within the Cabell-Wayne Historical Society, “Parades and

Celebrations,” Accession 1975/06.0099 at Marshall University. This photo courtesy of the

Special Collections, James E. Morrow Library, Marshall University, Huntington, WV.

68

Buffington, a Confederate veteran. Gideon was known for his drive towards improving the

conditions of the city, and was instrumental in helping to organize its first water works in 1886.54

city a gift of two water fountains one on Third Avenue and Tenth Street and the other on Fifth

Avenue and Ninth Street.55 Above these two water fountains stood statues of Union soldiers

standing with their arms shouldered. These statues were meant to commemorate the sacrifice of

Union soldiers and were probably made in gratitude of Sam Gideon’s efforts on the company’s

behalf.56

INDUSTRY, SECTIONAL IDENTITY, AND THE STATE OF WEST VIRGINIA

To better understand the early development of Huntington and the continuance of

sectional memory in the area, it is important to illustrate the significant changes occurring in the

state government throughout the 1870s and 80s. Sectional animosity remained a persistent issue

in state politics as embodied in the loyalty oaths that disenfranchised former Confederates. By

1872, sectional animosity became a moot issue by the revisions of the Democratic Party

(headed by many former Confederates) on previously pro-Union Republican state policies such

as loyalty oaths, the 1863 State Constitution, and the creation of the township system instead of

the former county court. The surge of Democrats into the state legislature signaled the end of

sectional conflict within state politics. As sectional issues faded, discussion in the state

government illustrated a new power struggle was breaking out in the Democratic Party.

Industrialists clashed with Redeemers, proponents of the gentrified political system in

54 Baumgartner, First Families of Huntington, 17; Robert L. Archer, Robert L. Archer Collection “Chronicles of

Early Huntington, 1871-1896,” Accession 530 (Manuscript 124), Special Collections, James E. Morrow Library,

Marshall University, Huntington, WV. The first use of water by the Huntington Water Company was at the

Gideon’s clothing store. 55 “Soldier’s Mate Sold for Junk,” Huntington Advertiser, August 3, 1915. 56 “Sam Gideon Made Fountain Deal,” Huntington Advertiser, August 3, 1915.

69

antebellum Virginia who were largely former Confederates, and Agrarians over how to develop

industry within West Virginia. Industrialists favored economic policies that allowed industry and

railroads generous boons and attracted capital into the state, whereas the Redeemers and

Agrarians favored limited industrial growth and strict legislation that taxed and regulated these

industries in order to safeguard small farmers and large landowners. Huntington developed

during a time when sectional animosity was subsiding amongst state leaders in Charleston, as a

new power struggle gripped the Democratic Party between Industrialists and Agrarians.

As mentioned in the previous chapter, Cabell County citizens had changed significantly

in their opinion of the treatment of ex-Confederates after the war. Largely due to the radical

positions of many Republicans in Congress, such as Thaddeus Stevens and Charles Sumner, the

desire for the re-enfranchisement of ex-Confederates grew. Across the state the Democratic Party

gained power pushing for this policy. Through close elections in the gubernatorial race and

strong wins in district elections in the south and east, Democrats gained power much to the

consternation of the state’s Republican Party. Republicans, fearful of continuing disenfranchising

whites while pushing for African American enfranchisement, hoped to pass the Flick

Amendment in order to prevent disruption in their party and quell Democratic support. Passing

the Flick Amendment in 1871 brought about the opposite reaction pushing Democrats to victory

in the state elections of 1872. Democrats then pressed for a new state constitution in 1872, which

signaled the defeat of wartime Unionism and with it the Republican Party within state politics.57

Democrats had surged into power utilizing ex-Confederate opposition to wartime

57 For a more extensive coverage of the political development of the state government in West Virginia during

Reconstruction see: Rice and Brown, West Virginia, 154-173.

70

Republicanism, yet there were many within the party that had other agendas. Republicans

recognized the already evident factions emerging within the Democratic coalition. A friend of

William H.H. Flick noted, “If you will recollect we agreed that we were of the opinion that such

men as Walker, Baker, H.G. Davis [& co.] were not so much interested in the Rebels voting as

they were in holding on to the offices which I believe is the case.”58 These men used the

continued sectional turmoil in the state to place themselves into positions that helped advance

legislation supportive to outside industry and the railroads. Sectional animosity became the

vehicle that ushered in a turning point for the economic future of the state.

These men were later classified by historians as “Regulars” within the Democratic Party,

and they stood in contrast with their fellow Democrats whose support stemmed from yeoman

farmers in rural areas of the state. Nationally Republicans were identified as the party

representing industrial growth and big business, but the party’s ties to black suffrage weakened

their standing among West Virginia’s largely conservative population. By working closely with

the federal government and the national Republican Party during the Civil War, the state’s

Republican founding leaders had created the new state. But this close relationship had ultimately

doomed the state Republican Party in West Virginia by forcing them to support black suffrage,

an issue harder for voting West Virginians to swallow than enfranchising ex-Confederates. This

relationship demonstrates significant credence to Blight’s thesis that the aspect of white

supremacist memory was working alongside the reconciliationist aspect of memory to form a

new remembrance of the war that ignored the element of emancipation and African-Americans’

58 Letter from Jacob V. [C. Law] to William H. H. Flick, William H.H. Flick Papers, A&M 1349, Microfilm,

Regional History Center, West Virginia University, Morgantown, WV.

71

memory of the war.59 Former Unionists and Republicans, finding the national Republican Party’s

agenda with Reconstruction unpalatable to West Virginia voters, were unable to garner

significant strength to utilize “bloody shirt” tactics to win votes.

Ex-Confederates and their Democratic allies’ victories in the 1871-1872 elections

demonstrated that the majority of West Virginians were committed to halting any further

legislation for African American civil liberties or proscriptions against former Confederates.60

When John Jacob, West Virginia’s first Democratic governor, in his conciliatory message to the

legislature in 1872 called for an end to the hostility from the late war his message did not come

from a repentant enemy but a victorious one. “The State was but recently formed, and that in the

midst of a bloody struggle, yet all branches of the public service are fully organized, and the

bitterness of those unhappy times has passed away and their memory will only serve to bind us

more closely together.”61 Ex-Confederates in the Democratic Party had settled sectional issues

by reasserting dominance over state politics at negating many of the victories of wartime

Unionists. Their calls to rebind the nation’s wounds played lip service to the reconciliationist

sentiment that helped them to rise to power, yet by 1872 ex-Confederates and their Democratic

allies had solidified their control over state politics within West Virginia.

Meanwhile other groups within the Democratic Party were now in a position to assert

their own interests. These “Regulars,” like Johnson Newlon Camden and Henry G. Davis,

represented industrial influence, and sought to pass legislation that made conditions favorable for

59 David Blight, Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory (Cambridge: Belknap Press, 2001).

60 Stephen D. Engle, “Mountaineer Reconstruction: Blacks in the Political Reconstruction of West Virginia,” The

Journal of Negro History 78, No. 3 (Summer 1993), 137-165. 61 John J. Jacob, Message to the Legislature, West Virginia Senate, Journal of the Senate 1872 (Henry S. Walker:

Charleston, 1872) 32.

72

outside business interests. When West Virginia formed in 1863 over ninety percent of its people

and economy were tied to agriculture.62 Industrialists flocked to the region as transportation

slowly opened the mineral-rich interior of the state. Railroads such as the Chesapeake and Ohio

allowed coal mining and other extractive industries to develop around small towns such as

Quinnimont, Stone Cliff, Fire Creek, and Hawk’s Nest. As these towns grew and provided their

owners with a rush of capital, many of these men emerged into the state and national political

world in order to protect their interests from competition and government interference. Johnson

Newlon Camden was one such Regular, an early excavator of oil around Parkersburg in Wood

County. Just before the outbreak of the Civil War, Camden created one of the first oil wells in

Parkersburg. He managed and grew his business throughout the Civil War and later partnered

with John D. Rockefeller’s Standard Oil Company. He entered state politics in order to protect

Standard Oil’s monopoly in the state. During this early period of Democratic rule, Camden

struggled against the combined influence of the Redeemer and Agrarian factions within his party.

These factions felt threatened by Camden’s economic policies that placed heavy burdens on

small farmers. Small farmers were charged high shipping rates for their relatively small cargo of

crops (compared to large extractive industries), and were put under immense financial strain.

Camden failed to achieve the governor’s seat in 1868 and 1872, and due to his controversial

connection to Standard Oil lost his chance for a Senate seat in both 1875 and 1877. Camden’s

business connections tied him to the development of industry, and therefore connected him to the

growing town of Huntington along with the interests of the Chesapeake and Ohio Railroad. In

November 1900, Camden entered an agreement with several leading men in Huntington in order

62 Rice and Brown, West Virginia, 183.

73

to purchase and trade stock in a new railroad connecting Huntington to Catlettsburg, Kentucky

and reconstruct the lines that extended from Huntington to Ashland, Kentucky and Ironton,

Ohio.63 Many of these leading men were former veterans on both sides, including B.W. Foster

(Union), L. H. Burks (Confederate), J. L. Caldwell (Union), John H. Russell (Confederate), T. H.

Harvey (Confederate). One’s sectional sentiments and military past did not preclude a business

partnership in Camden’s West Virginia.

Opposed to many of the Regulars’ political designs was a coalition of former ex-

Confederates and large landowners. These “Redeemers” were similar to many ex-Confederate

Redeemer groups throughout the South and were led by men such as Samuel Price, Charles

James Faulkner Jr., Allen T. Caperton, and Johnathan M. Bennett.64 They represented the old

political gentry and often allied with the Agrarian faction Democratic Party against the

monopolistic policies of industrialists. Agrarians like E. Willis Wilson agreed with the

Redeemers that the privileges of railroads and industries were detrimental to the state’s

population and economic policy. However, the Redeemers’ focus was maintaining race relations

as close to pre-war ideals as possible, and undoing the work of the previous Republican

government by re-enfranchising former Confederates, repealing or amending the wartime state

constitution, and enacting restrictions to prevent newly enfranchised African Americans from

voting. These men were disenfranchised after the war and had seen their return to power as a

validation by the state population against the Republicans and their platform on race relations.

Many of the men who led this faction were political and military leaders in the Confederacy

63 Johnson N. Camden, Miscellaneous Folder 1, Box 71, Johnson Newlon Camden Papers, A&M 7, West Virginia

Regional History Center, West Virginia University, Morgantown, WV. 64 Rice and Brown, West Virginia, 168.

74

itself: Samuel Price was a lieutenant governor of Confederate Virginia, Charles James Faulkner,

Jr. was a Confederate veteran, and Allen T. Caperton was a member of the Confederate Senate.

Their ability to capitalize on the post-war tensions of returning Confederates and their

sympathizers allowed them to gain power within the Democratic Party and state throughout the

1870s. They were able to roll back many of the reforms that the Republicans had achieved, but

were unable to maintain a consolidated force as sectional issues became less of a motivating

force in the state’s political culture.

The new conflict between the industrial elements of the Democratic Party and the

Agrarian/Redeemer allies began soon after the collapse of Republican resistance. By 1872, with

the new constitution ratified by a large majority of the state, the Democratic Party had repealed

the last vestiges of the former Republican government. While some still hoped to punish further

their former pro-Union foes, most Democrats began to deal with the growing ideological split in

their party.65 The State Constitution Convention of 1872 had been presided over by Samuel

Price, former Lt. Governor of Confederate Virginia, and represented the dominance of the

Redeemer faction within the Democratic Party. By 1876 the Redeemers had elected their

gubernatorial candidate, former Confederate major Henry Mason Matthews, and had prevented

the leader of the Regulars (Industrialists) faction, J.N. Camden from acquiring a U.S. Senate seat.

The true differences between the Regulars and Redeemers rested on their political and economic

65 According to a Wheeling Daily Intelligencer article dated January 25, 1872, a sarcastic resolution was proposed in

the state convention to change the name of the new counties Grant and Lincoln to the more Confederate names of

Lee and Davis. Wheeling Daily Intelligencer, “State Convention,” January 25, 1872. There is also the more legal

and binding action passed by the House of Delegates titled “An Act providing for ascertaining the amount of public

property, and its value, destroyed in the State by the Federal Army during the late civil war” allowing a recorder in

each county to summon witnesses and provide a list of damages and their value to be provided to the state senators

for compensation. Acts of the West Virginia Legislature, Tenth sess., 1872, House of Delegates, ch.135, p. 184 –

185.

75

ideologies. Redeemers represented the political ideals of the antebellum period. Many of these

politicians represented their constituents in a similar manner as their antebellum forbearers. They

conducted political campaigns through open communication meetings organized at local town

halls, personal interaction and addressing local issues, and were made up of large landowners

who were often descendents of previous politicians. The political culture of the day was not as

efficient as the new modern political system that began to develop after the Civil War. Regulars

utilized interstate resources to champion their political campaigns, often utilizing their business

connections to network with national and state politicians and appease local constituencies.66

With the advent of industrialism, wealthy industrialists and merchants clashed with this old

political structure based around large landowners and farmers over issues surrounding economic

policies such as high tariffs to protect industry.

The Redeemer faction cooperated with the Agrarians on economic policies. Both shared a

deep skepticism of railroad companies and often felt that these businesses were not paying their

fair share of taxes and placing a heavy burden on small farmers through unfair shipping rates that

prioritized large industrial shipping. However, they by no means wanted to fully get rid of the

railroads. As historian Ronald Eller puts it, “On the one hand, they [Redeemers] desired

modernization; on the other, they clung to outdated legal institutions and philosophies that

hindered their ability to achieve the very goal they so ardently desired.”67 As such, they passed

legislation such as the Railroad Incorporation Act of 1873, which allowed the state to create and

enforce legislation regulating railroads, provided four classes of rates for transportation, defined

66 Williams, West Virginia and the Captains of Industry, 11-12. 67 Ronald Lewis, Transforming the Appalachian Countryside: Railroads, Deforestation, and Social Change in West

Virginia (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1998), 105.

76

what materials shipped were designated under each group of transportation, and empowered the

state to act against any railroad that strayed from these guidelines.68 Although they made early

inroads in curtailing the power of B&O and C&O railroads, the industrialists retained many

powerful figures within the state government. Many of these “Regulars” benefited from the new

style of political campaigning that began to emerge soon after the Civil War. In the antebellum

period, politicians were largely lawyers and sons of former politicians, and were often the

dominant political force in their locality thanks to their ownership of large tracts of land. After

the war, there emerged a new class of elite (the Regulars) from individuals (foreign and state-

born) whose wealth was derived from investment in industry such as in railroads and natural

resource extraction. These new elites benefited from the wide influence of the companies they

had worked with and promised to bring wealth to regions of the state. They had boosters in the

newspapers across the state and were more tied to national figures in politics and wealth than

their Redeemer and Agrarian counterparts.69

These Redeemer/Agrarian factions frequently opposed Camden and some of them were

even willing to extend a hand to Republicans to oppose his influence. A letter addressed to E.

Sehon from one of his friends claimed that Democratic State Senator John D. Alderson was in

Martinsburg talking to Republican Party leaders:

He [Alderson] paid us a visit . . .ostensibly on political business, and held his

conference entirely with the Republicans and one or two [discredited?] Democrats

of the Lucas element, and did not see a one of our party leaders. As repeated to

68 Acts of the West Virginia Legislature, Eleventh sess., 1873, House of Delegates, ch.227, p. 710-724. 69 Williams, West Virginia and the Captains of Industry, 7-15.

77

me for a purpose by the principal Rep. with whom he talked, he said in substance

that he would prefer seeing Nathan Goff [Republican] or Flick [Republican] in the

Senate to Johnson N. Camden and intended traveling into every County in the

State, using his time & money to defeat him.70

Amidst the fighting over economic policy and the direction of the young state, even former

enemies were unlikely allies. Waitman T. Willey, the respected Republican senator who helped

to create West Virginia, mentioned he “admired” Senator Camden and claimed, “Personally I

think you have done as much or . . . more for West Va. than any other Democrat from our state

could have done.”71 The situation in the state legislature represented a complex crossing of old

and new political elites, and illustrated how the sectional issues of the war no longer determined

economic policy.

Camden, Davis, and other Regulars helped to ensure the creation of a pro-industry state

and national government.72 During the transition from Republican rule to Democratic rule

between 1868 and 1875, Camden nominally led the Democratic Party. His increasing pushes for

state laws that benefited the oil production of his Camden Consolidated Oil Company (a secret

subsidiary of Standard Oil), along with his support for the light tariff that Grover Cleveland

promised ended up costing him much of the support in his party. Davis on the other hand

emerged as the more politically powerful leader in the Democratic Party. Davis was not only a

Democrat, but had been a Unionist during the war. His support of removing the restrictions on

70 Letter from David C. Westenhaver to E. Sehon May 26, 1886, Folder 5, Box 35, Johnson Newlon Camden Papers,

A&M 7, West Virginia Regional History Center, West Virginia University, Morgantown, WV. 71 Letter from Waitman T. Willey to Senator Johnson N. Camden Nov. 17, 1886, Folder 5, Box 35, Johnson Newlon

Camden Papers, A&M 7, West Virginia Regional History Center, West Virginia University, Morgantown, WV. 72 Williams, West Virginia and the Captains of Industry, 4.

78

ex-Confederates in 1868 along with his appeal as a Unionist during the war and clean political

background gave him the boost he needed to win the Senate seat vacated by Waitman T. Willey

in 1871.73 He spent much of his time in the United States Senate, in which he served until 1883.

Davis especially influenced the Democrats in West Virginia toward a strong pro-industrial stance

and later allied with Stephen Elkins and the Republican Party on maintaining this pro-industrial

economic policy in the 1890s. These industrialists produced an environment so conducive to

industry in the state that the effects of that connection are still felt today.

Despite the rising conflict between proponents of commercial agriculture and industry,

the Democratic Party maintained an uneasy balance during the 1880s. Although Democrats

differed on these key issues, the binding “mortar” that held them together was the

“overwhelmingly rural character of the state and party devotion to Jeffersonian principles of low

taxes, economy in government, and states’ rights.”74 Regulars, despite their national focus, still

worked to set pro-industrial policies. Their interstate resources (business connections, wealth,

and easy access to national politicians) gave Regulars stronger advantages in influencing the

state Democratic Party toward a strong pro-industrial economic policy.

However, it was not just the Democrats who affected this transition. Although the

Democrats remained in power throughout most of the transition to an industrial economy, by the

1890s Republicans, reorganized under the leadership of Stephen B. Elkins (Davis’ son-in-law),

advocated a similar message. Republicans struggled for years after their loss of power in 1871 to

find a unified message that did not reopen the wounds of the Civil War. When Elkins emerged as

73 Rice and Brown, West Virginia, 166-167. 74Ibid, 168.

79

one of the prominent party leaders, he allied with Davis to reach a bipartisan agreement between

Republicans and Regulars within the Democratic Party to support industrial economic policies.

The influence of Elkins and the Republican Party’s new platform advocating a strong pro-

industrial agenda provided Republicans with an issue which gave them a broader appeal. With

the Regulars dominating much of the Democratic Party, what resulted was a largely bipartisan

economic policy that brought Republican politicians support from West Virginians. Although

these groups still argued over issues relating to local politics throughout the state, their main

priority was a secure political base for industry to thrive.75

Huntington’s growth as a commercial and industrial center was a direct result of this

appeasement of industrial interests perpetuated by leading industrialists in the Democratic Party.

During the 1870s and 80s, Regulars within the Democratic Party wrested control from Redeemer

politicians and proposed new policies that favored railroads and extraction industries. Huntington

benefited from many of these new economic policies which allowed for companies such as the

Chesapeake and Ohio Railroad to find tax loopholes. Although Huntington’s C&O railroad was

not directly affiliated with Davis’s coal industries, the presence of an industrial-friendly state

government assured Huntington that there was going to be no interference in the town’s

industries by the governing body. Huntington’s shipping of resources across West Virginia into

Virginia and also into the Midwest provided opportunities for C&O since it ran counter to the

direction of Davis’ coal industries which mostly supplied its coal to buyers in New England.76

75 Williams, West Virginia and the Captains of Industry, 16. 76 Ibid, 20-21.

80

By the end of the 1890s and 1900s, Stephen Elkins had reorganized the Republican Party

and brought it to power within the state government by assuring Regulars within the Democratic

Party (such as Davis) that a pro-industrial state policy was maintained. This agreement ensured

that despite bickering amongst Democrats and Republicans the state remained a friend to

industry. For the town of Huntington this had already seemed like inevitability. It grew steadily,

attracting more and more new residents looking for work in the town’s many businesses and

industries. Many of its prominent citizens maintained a close connection to the industries created

by wealthy financiers from out of state. Huntington survived despite financial panic, antagonism

from supporters of commercial agriculture, and state political disputes.

Although sectional animosity had faded in state politics in the early 1870s, it never

disappeared from the minds of those who had fought the war. Despite the lack of discussion in

the halls of the state legislature, the meaning of the war was not settled by Democratic

dominance throughout the last three decades of the 1800s. The regulation of railroads and

industry, and the future of commercial agriculture in the state dampened sectional animosity but

did not replace it on the local level. The ongoing war for the memory of the war turned from the

legislature in Charleston to the many public spaces in local communities. Locally, the fires of the

war remained despite the renewed promises of economic growth that industry brought to the

state. Although ex-Confederates had seemingly “won the peace,” both former Unionists and

Confederates continued to fight a war, no longer with bullets and guns but with parades and

monuments, for public memory of the war. The creation of veterans’ organizations in the 1890s

and 1900s encouraged a coordinated drive that saw soldiers’ memories renew the fight for the

legacy of the war.

81

CHAPTER 3

CIVIL WAR VETERANS AND THEIR ROLE IN MEMORY

By the 1890s the fledgling commercial town of Huntington was seeing a steady growth in

both population and industry. The population had swelled from barely 3,000 by the end of the

1870s to 11,000 by 1891.1 Huntington had also seen a spike in industrial development with the

expanding Ensign Manufacturing Company (which employed over 1,100 men), Emmons & Marr

Hardware and Stoves Manufacturers, the Chesapeake and Ohio Railroad Repair Shops, and the

Fitzgerald Patent Prepared Plaster Company. These businesses were growing at an exceptional

rate thanks to “cheap fuel, cheap iron, and cheap lumber.”2 As the city grew, it attracted more

and more migrants searching for work. These new residents came from other regions with

differing attitudes and contrasting views on the conduct of the Civil War and its legacy. Yet amid

such widespread immigration to Huntington from both the North and South there remained

remarkably muted public contention over the legacy of the war. Regardless of their views,

veterans of both sides could not forsake their present conditions for the sake of the past. Veterans

worked and cooperated with their sectional adversaries in order to ensure Huntington’s continued

prosperity. This preference illustrates the importance of the veterans’ current economic status in

facilitating reconciliationist sentiment. However, once the success of the city was ensured,

veterans returned to separate and conflicting attitudes that stressed their sectional narrative over

their counterparts. By not providing any structural narrative that satisfied former Northern and

1 James N. Potts and James H. Cammack, eds., Huntington, WV City Directory (Hamilton: Hamilton, Publishing

Company, 1892). 2 Ibid, vii.

82

Southern veterans concerned with maintaining their wartime identity, economic prosperity

provided only a temporary truce in the long debate over the meaning of the Civil War among

Huntington’s veterans.

In order to do so, Civil War veterans maintained close connections with one another, and

sought to maintain these bonds by forming veterans’ organizations. The G.A.R. had formed in

1866, and maintained a steadily growing membership over the next two decades. By the 1880s

and 90s they were a considerable voting bloc of the Republican Party, and constantly lobbied

political officials to remember the pensions promised by the government for the sacrifices of

Union veterans during the Civil War.

Confederate veterans, although as vocal as their Union counterparts, took considerably

longer to organize into a large national organization. The United Confederate Veterans was able

to extoll the shared meaning of the war and helped to solidify the Lost Cause within southern

society by becoming a public link to antebellum Southern society. The U.C.V. and its sister

organization, the Daughters of the Confederacy, continually reminded ex-Confederates and their

families of the values and confidence they had lost in the war. In Huntington, former

Confederates worked towards linking their experiences to the larger national debate on the

meaning of the war. Confederate veterans sought to distinguish themselves from their Union

counterparts by segregating their events from general memorial commemorations and by striving

to commemorate broad-reaching themes of Southern identity as opposed to the particular

experiences of the members during war time. Despite such discrepancy there remained very little

contention between the two former enemies. The economic prosperity of Huntington remained

the top priority of many of the city’s residents. Although the separation of the two groups and

disagreement over public monuments demonstrated that there remained significant divides, the

83

success of the city demanded a unity that served to placate but not subdue conflict over the war’s

legacy.

Confederate veterans had not remained silent but became increasingly vocal in literature,

newspapers, and public squares arguing against Union interpretations of the war. In Huntington,

as in West Virginia as a whole, Confederates were largely cut out of predominant southern views

of the war and its legacy. West Virginia lacked many of the staples of Southern identity. The

mountainous terrain in the region made plantation agriculture difficult and mass amounts of

cotton production impossible. The state lacked a large African-American slave population in the

years prior to the war, and the significant portions that were present were employed in early

industrial areas such as the Kanawha Valley to labor on salt works and early coal mines.3 Part of

the message given by Confederate veterans in Huntington was an attempt to reach out from the

region and connect with the larger Confederate identity. For these Confederates residing in West

Virginia, a state born antagonistic to the very cause they held dear, it was critical that their world

and views not be ignored or obscured. This understanding necessitated a very active

organization, unified and vocal, to remind local, state, and national audiences of their presence

and voice within the annals of Civil War history.

Nationally by the 1890s, Confederate veterans unified into a structure similar to the

G.A.R. but built upon different foundations. Although the G.A.R. was dedicated to reminding the

nation of the valiant sacrifices and determination of Union veterans, the United Confederate

Veterans (U.C.V.) formed around a growing fear of the loss of Southern identity and memory.

3 Otis Rice and Stephen Brown, West Virginia: A History, 2nd ed. (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1993),

80-83.

84

Confederate veterans had seen the South change significantly after the war and Reconstruction.

Many veterans had grown up in a world that was lost to them now. The “Old South” had been a

society based on agriculture, mainly cotton production, and was maintained by a small elite,

slaveholding aristocracy which held large amounts of property and political power. The largest

percentage of the white population was a class of white yeoman farmers striving to maintain

their independence, and possibly achieve “gentry” status. African-American slaves represented

the lowest caste in the “Old South” hierarchy and were utilized to maintain the large plantations

and farms of landowning whites. This society had collapsed after the Civil War and the advent of

emancipation, and white southerners had struggled to rebuild their society ever since.4

Confederate West Virginians’ lives and local society were very different. Western

Virginia, and particularly the region around Cabell, was locked in a proto-industrial state. The

main focus was on small scale agriculture by white yeoman farmers; however, there existed

small manufacturing and industrial centers, like the salt works in the Kanawha Valley, which

served local needs. West Virginians were aware of the wealth that the natural resources of their

area could provide, but lacked sufficient start-up capital, infrastructure, and labor to achieve

4To attempt to explain the entirety of the historiography of the Old South is too much for a footnote and beyond the

capacity of this thesis. This footnote will instead seek to give the reader a brief overview of relevant source material

that has influenced the work of this essay. Much of the thought that has shaped this thesis on southern society comes

from the short but widely informative book by historian Mark M. Smith, Debating Slavery: Economy and Society in

the Antebellum American South (1998). Along with the work of Bertram Wyatt-Brown and especially his books

Southern Honor: Ethics and Behavior in the Old South (1982) and his shortened version, Honor and Violence in the

Old South (1986), these analyses of the Old South’s economy and society have provided a larger scope in which to

orient this thesis. For an understanding of the economic impact of slavery on the Old South in both its capitalist and

non-capitalist aspects see: Eugene Genovese’s books, The Political Economy of Slavery (1989); Roll, Jordan, Roll

(1974); and The Slaveholders’ Dilemma (1992); Robert William Fogel’s and Stanley L. Engerman’s Time on the

Cross (1974); James Oakes’s The Ruling Race (1982) and Slavery and Freedom (1990); Shearer Davis Bowman’s

Masters and Lords (1993); and Gavin Wright’s Old South, New South (1997). To better understand the ways in

which the Old South society operated and what part white yeoman farmers played in it see: Steve Hahn’s The Roots

of Southern Populism (1983); Lacy K. Ford’s Origins of Southern Radicalism (1988); and with a greater emphasis

on the antebellum views of mountain whites and slavery in Appalachia, William Dunaway’s Slavery in the

American Mountain South (2003).

85

significant economic growth. On top of this, Virginia state politics heavily favored the large

plantation owners of the eastern region of the state making state development of the region

impossible for much of the antebellum period.5 Some Western Virginians, such as Sampson

Sanders and Albert G. Jenkins, were able to live the plantation lifestyle similar to their eastern

counterparts, but most could not amass enough favorable land to make commercial agriculture

viable. Many former Confederates lived like their counterparts, Union soldiers, with allegiances

owed to personal and familial reasons.

Nationally, Reconstruction brought about new challenges to Southern society and white

southerners reacted in various ways. Some embraced these new developments and sought to

adopt the industrial ways of Northern cities. These southerners lauded the natural resources

within the region and encouraged Northern investors to invest in the South and bring large

amounts of capital to the region. Some white southerners resentful of the power and wealth that

large landowners held both before and after the Civil War banded together with poor blacks to

form a political coalition known as the Populist movement. Their efforts crossed racial lines and

were a major threat to the solidly Democratic South, whose leaders relied on racial rhetoric to

separate whites and blacks from unifying against wealthy white conservatives. Racial attitudes

remained in flux for several decades after the Civil War as white and black southerners adjusted

to the new freed status of African Americans. During the 1880s and 1890s, white southerners

experimented with attempts to curtail the advances of African-American citizenship and

enfranchisement and laid the foundation for a system of discrimination known as Jim Crow.6 The

5 Rice and Brown, West Virginia, 80-98. 6 The system known as Jim Crow is an extensive topic of debate amongst historians. Primarily the focus occurs

around the concepts of how, why, and when. This debate is much too large and out of scope for this thesis to cover

86

postwar South was divided and adrift, struggling to maintain some semblance of regional identity

and pride. Several groups proposed new answers to the problems facing the region, but each new

answer seemed to bring its own set of problems or only made the situation worse.7

For many former Confederates caught up in the confusion and dismayed at the current

state of the region, a growing nostalgia emerged for the “Old South.” This was a time, thought

former Confederates, where the South had found a balance to the problems surrounding race,

class, and society. Veterans recalled past days of dutiful and loyal slaves, honorable and

chivalrous behavior among all men (rich and poor), and a region brimming with wealth and

success. Although this nostalgia was not based in fact, many veterans believed strongly that the

antebellum society of the South had been a pristine order that had made the region successful and

that the war and emancipation had utterly decimated not only Southern society, but the very idea

of what made them Southerners. This myth of the “Lost Cause” of the valiant stand by

Confederates against the forces of modernity became a balm to soothe the injured pride and

in its entirety. For a great introduction to the detailed historiography of Jim Crow see: John David Smith, When Did

Southern Segregation Begin? (Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2002). 7 There is a lot of debate on the issues surrounding the post-bellum society of the South and of the particular changes

and influence the “New South” ideology had on the region. Several political and societal changes would shape the

region during the last few decades of the nineteenth century, and in my belief one of the most important and

interesting was the reimaging of the region by proponents of this ideology. These debates are far too large to

incorporate within this paper, but a few have shaped the direction and insights within this paper. Edward Ayers’

Southern Crossing: A History of the American South, 1877-1906 (1995), which is a shortened version of his The

Promise of the New South: Life After Reconstruction, is a primary guide in this work. Ayer’s depictions of the

railroad as a means by which progress entered into the New South, his view on the reforming actions of the Populist

Movement, and his incorporation of the cultural life of the region into its political and societal constraints provide a

lot of insight into this paper. Huntington matches Ayers’ description of a New South city with its booming industrial

development after the introduction of the railroad to the area, and its commercial influence on society. While this

book utilizes Ayers’ approach to the future of the New South, it relies on the wisdom portrayed in C. Vann

Woodward’s Origins of the New South, 1877-1913 (1966), which encompasses more of a connection to the past and

antebellum Southern society. Through Woodward we can see more of a debate with the past that is characteristic of

the Southerners’ mindset and see what difficulties and challenges “New South” spokesmen took to change the

region and society.

87

frustration of many white southerners. This turn to the past represented a desire to reject the

advances and changes in society that had reshaped the region after the war.

Although there had been numerous fraternal organizations in place before the creation of

the United Confederate Veterans, the various organizations lacked any connection beyond the

immediate local area. The U.C.V. brought together veterans under a national umbrella

organization modeled after the former Confederate government. Although the organization was

formed in 1889, Confederate veterans had not been silent observers to the actions of their

northern counterparts. They wrote books, memoirs, and personal correspondence to set the

record straight on the causes and meaning of their stance during the Civil War.8 When the

U.C.V. formed its national structure, Confederates found another outlet by which to imbue their

remembrance of the war in a public setting.

This unifying structure allowed Huntington Confederate veterans a means to enter into

discussions about the memory of the war with their fellow southerners. No doubt worried about

their place in history, many of these veterans utilized rhetoric, monument making, public

celebrations, and social events to separate themselves from their Union counterparts, with whom

they shared more of an antebellum past than with Confederates from the Deep South. As will be

seen later, the Confederate veterans of Huntington’s attempt to build a monument to the

“Women of the South” helped to remind the local population of the region’s connection to the

South as a whole and served to remind Southern audiences of the same message. This dual

message was essential for Confederate veterans in West Virginia to remind their state and the

South of their legacy and participation in the war. The failure of the monument’s creation also

8 David Blight, Race and Reunion, 158.

88

demonstrates the difficulty that Confederate veterans had in remaining a unified voice and in

mustering support from the population of Huntington.

Veterans’ organizations on both sides tasked themselves with guarding the ideals for

which they had fought, and instilling them in future generations. Through the public events of

monument making, social events, and Decoration Day commemorations, veterans’ organizations

shaped the public sphere in order to remind their local community of the legacy of the war. A

local G.A.R. post, or U.C.V. camp, might raise funds for the creation of a public monument in a

populated area, or organize a banquet or other event where food and drinks provided

opportunities for speeches and commemoration ceremonies. Decoration Day (an early version of

Memorial Day) became the most important day for Civil War veterans. On the last Monday in

May (various Confederate U.C.V. groups held their “Confederate Decoration Day” on another

day, usually in early June), veterans’ groups carried out plans that had been organized several

months in advance. The day was marked by parades, speeches, a walk to the graves of soldiers,

and the ceremonial decorating of the graves in remembrance of their sacrifice. These activities

ritualized the remembrance of the war and underscored the importance of the issues at stake in

the conflict. For Confederate soldiers the ritualized activities had a more eulogizing effect as

speeches and ceremonies reflected on the loss of the Confederacy and of a way of life. For

Confederates remembering the war served as both catharsis and grief often adding another layer

of reverence to the commemoration.9

9 A lot of great works have been written on how veterans commemorated the war. Some notable works are: Caroline

E. Janney, Burying the Dead But Not the Past: Ladies’ Memorial Associations and the Lost Cause. (Chapel Hill:

University of North Carolina Press, 2008), Karen Cox,. Dixie’s Daughters: The United Daughters of the

Confederacy and the Preservation of Confederate Culture. (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2003), and

Barbara A. Gannon, The Won Cause: Black and White Comradeship in the Grand Army of the Republic. (Chapel

Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2014).

89

In Huntington the two veterans’ groups often operated alongside one another, but also

remained characteristically separate. Although the work of the past few decades had shown the

capability of economic growth to serve as an agent of reconciliation, former Union and

Confederate veterans, when engaged in active remembrance of the war, continued to operate

separately. Their groups had separate Decoration Days, raised funds for separate monuments,

and even endorsed separate politicians for local and state offices. During the 1890s and 1900s the

veterans’ organizations recruited hundreds of members and shaped public perception of the war.

By the 1910s and 20s the organizations struggled under the weight of low membership due to

advancing age and the onset of the Great Depression in the late 1920s.10 However, these

veterans’ organizations were able to instill within the town of Huntington a mixed legacy, neither

fully southern in identity nor northern in its sympathies. The town remained, as it always had, a

center for commercial expansion concerned with the attraction of industry and maintenance of a

peaceful community. Though monuments remained on city streets, courthouse steps, and

cemetery plots, the town grew more and more distant from its past. It was several decades before

Huntington began to nurture and cultivate its historical legacy, and the effects that veterans had

in the shaping of the city.

10 Grand Army of the Republic, “Roster of Department of West Virginia, G.A.R., 1915,” Grand Army of the

Republic, Department of West Virginia, Ms 80-7, The West Virginia State Archives, Cultural Center, Charleston,

WV; “Decoration Day Takes New Meaning; Homage Paid Four Wars’ Heroes,” Huntington Advertiser, May 30,

1921. With the Roster we can see that there were clearly 75 members on active register with the G.A.R., and within

the next six years there was reported that there were now not enough members to hold a separate G.A.R. memorial

for Decoration Day without assistance from the American Legion.

90

VETERANS IN HUNTINGTON

This thesis has demonstrated so far the influence Civil War veterans had upon the

founding and commercial growth of the town of Huntington. By the 1890s, veterans played a

much more significant role in shaping public perceptions of the war and its meaning. Various

factors contributed to the turn of Civil War veterans from city-building to legacy-shaping. First,

was the resurgence in the late 1880s and early 1890s of accounts written by Civil War veterans

and renewed interest in veterans’ groups. The G.A.R. languished in membership during the

1870s but exploded in popularity during the 1880s.11 The U.C.V. organization was formed in

1889 in no small part due to this renewed interest in the war. Second, Huntington’s growth had

stabilized by the 1890s; with the influx of new businesses and residents the city was no longer in

danger of failing. Finally, the arrival of new residents brought in new ideas and experiences from

various parts of the nation. These experiences were different from the Civil War memories of

longtime residents and thus were more able to connect with a wider state and national discussion

than those who experienced the war only in Cabell County. These new developments initiated a

growing membership in Huntington’s veterans’ groups, a new drive towards monument making,

and a greater emphasis on Decoration Day and other commemoration events.

The records of the G.A.R. in Huntington have unfortunately been lost, but historians can

grasp some of the organization’s impact from other sources. The earliest mention we have of the

Huntington G.A.R. comes from 1887.12 While we do not have any official documentation of the

presence of the G.A.R. in Huntington before 1887, some sources may imply the presence of the

11 Blight, Race and Reunion, 170-171. 12 Huntington Advertiser, May 27, 1887.

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organization as early as 1880.13 In the 1891-1892 City Directory there is mention of a G.A.R.

post in Huntington identified as the Bailey Post no.4 with George A. Floding, a manufacturer of

regalia, as Commander.14 The organization was active throughout the 1890s, meeting once a

month at the International Order of Odd Fellows Building. Members worked towards Decoration

Day commemorative events as their presence is noted in newspaper coverage, and sometimes

used their influence to support local and state politicians. In 1897, the post endorsed the

candidacy of Gordon B. Gibbens of Parkersburg for the position of U.S. Marshal. The post’s

commander, George W. Hutchinson, wrote to Senator Stephen B. Elkins and Congressman

Blackburn B. Dovener of West Virginia for the endorsement.15 Both men were Republicans and

both had served as Union soldiers. The Huntington post was working toward securing pensions

and political appointments for fellow veterans, much like G.A.R. posts in other states. The

endorsements show the post to be closely attuned to the political situation in the state, and

demonstrates the influence of the post’s standing throughout the state.

13 According to G.A.R. records supplied by the Sons of Union Veterans, the legacy organization in charge of

relocating G.A.R. records, the Provisional Department of West Virginia in the G.A.R. organization was founded in

the state in 1868. It became a permanent department with 12 posts later in that year, however, by 1871 the

department was declared disbanded. It was restored to provisional status in November of 1880 and then reinstated as

permanent three years later. During the first run of the organization it appears that the Posts were numbered

chronologically upon submitting application status to join the provisional department. However, when the

department disbanded posts would have to reapply and be given new post numbers under this new department. This

would explain some of the inconsistencies in the records. For instance, both the Huntington Bailey Post, and the

Thoburn Post in Wheeling share the number “Post No. 4.” However it is impossible for Huntington to have been in

the early West Virginia Department since it was disbanded in 1871 right when the town was being built. So Thoburn

Post may have been the initial “Post no. 4” but when they were reorganized in 1880 the Huntington Post was given

the number under the new West Virginia department. This would therefore mean that the Huntington Bailey Post

would have been active by at least 1880 under the new West Virginia Department which is far more likely than it

being an organization at the founding of Huntington before 1871. Records for WV State organization of the G.A.R.

were found on garrrecords.org, the site used by the Sons of Union Veterans to list where G.A.R. materials in

archival repositories are being held. See: Sons of Union Veterans of the Civil War, “Grand Army of the Republic

Records Project,” Garrecords.org. 14 Potts and Cammack, eds., Huntington, WV City Directory, xiv, 36. 15 Gordon B. Gibbens Papers, A&M No. 2816, West Virginia Regional History Center, West Virginia University

Libraries, Morgantown, WV.

92

The Bailey Post was not active just in politics, but reminded residents about the

patriotism and sacrifice of the nation’s Union veterans. Aside from the aforementioned Union

veteran water fountains placed on Third and Fifth Avenue, the Bailey Post also commissioned a

monument housed on the courthouse steps. The monument is dedicated to the Union veterans

who had made the ultimate sacrifice during the war, and its position in front of the courthouse

lent more legitimacy to the organization. The Bailey Post was also a prominent organization

during Decoration Day celebrations and patriotic events such as a parade for the United States’

naval victory at Manila Bay on May 1, 1898.16 The Bailey Post also hosted the state reunion for

G.A.R. members in 1908 that contained an eventful parade celebration that was described as “the

largest, the greatest, the most gorgeous, the most brilliant and most representative of Huntington

of any, if indeed not all together of the large parades that were ever given in the city.”17 It is

therefore reasonable to conclude that the organization held a significant presence within the city

and contained a substantial membership during its existence.

Although it formed later, the United Confederate Veterans Camp Garnett #902 quickly

grew in strength to combat the Unionist interpretation of the war. The U.C.V. was probably

formed sometime in late 1889 as its first recorded minutes start in February 1890.18 The Camp

was named after the Confederate General Robert S. Garnett, who held the distinction of being

the first general officer to die in the Civil War on July 13, 1861, in Tucker County, West

16 There are several newspaper articles from the Huntington Advertiser commenting on the presence of G.A.R.

veterans during memorial celebrations lasting from 1896 well past 1916. The celebratory parade was listed in:

“Happenings of Interest,” Huntington Advertiser, May 27, 1898. 17 “Parade the Greatest in Our History,” Huntington Advertiser, September 24, 1908. 18 Jack Dickinson and Mark Meadows, A History of Camp Garnett United Confederate Veterans: Camp #902,

Huntington, WV (Huntington: n.p., 1987). Pamphlet is housed in the Special Collections, Rosanna Blake Library,

Marshall University, Huntington, WV.

93

Virginia. It was comprised early on by several soldiers from the 8th Virginia Cavalry, 16th

Virginia Cavalry, 22nd Virginia Infantry, and the 36th Virginia Infantry, which were formed from

volunteers from the western counties of West Virginia. Unlike the G.A.R. Bailey Post, Camp

Garnett’s records have been preserved and give us a fuller picture of how the organization

operated and the scope of its membership. Unlike Union veterans, the Camp Garnett members

attempted to stay out of politics. In their listing under the city directories in 1892 and 1896 they

claimed their purpose to be:

to perpetuate the memory of fallen comrades and minister to the wants of those

who were permanently disabled in the service; to preserve and maintain that

sentiment of fraternity, born of the hardships and dangers shared in the march, the

bivouac, and the battlefield. We propose to avoid anything which partakes of

partisanship in religion and politics, and at the same time we will lend our aid to

the maintenance of law and the preservation of order.19

From what their records claim there appears to be a great degree of truth in this

statement. Camp Garnett did not endorse any potential political candidates (although their very

actions in reshaping public memory were political in nature) and seemed more focused on

helping former Confederates and their fallen brethren. Much of their early work in the

community was centered on locating deceased Confederates on battlefields scattered throughout

the nation and reinterring them in Huntington’s Spring Hill Cemetery. The city of Huntington

gave Union and Confederate veterans separate plots in the cemetery to house fallen veterans in

19Potts and Cammack, eds., Huntington, WV City Directory (1892), xvi; James N. Potts and James H. Cammack,

eds., Huntington, WV City Directory (1896), 17.

94

1894, although it appears they were relocating graves as early as 1890.20 In 1892 they had

relocated the remains of Gen. Albert G. Jenkins from his family plot in Greenbottom and had

him reinterred in Spring Hill Cemetery.21 They also gave money to financially troubled members

for rent or to help pay for a comrade’s funeral. These measures show that the Camp’s focus was

more on memorial and charitable activities as opposed to the politically-minded G.A.R. veterans.

Another primary concern for the Confederate veterans was reaching out to the state and

national organization in order to connect to their Southern identity. For many of the veterans it

was important to be recognized as members of the larger community of Confederate veterans in

order to demonstrate their wartime contributions. The Camp Garnett veterans conducted several

measures to reach out beyond the state. They submitted articles and letters to the national U.C.V.

magazine, The Confederate Veteran; paid for members to go to statue unveilings like the Lee

Statue in Richmond; sent members to national and state reunions; proposed the erection of

monuments dedicated to national as opposed to local memorialization; and sent money to help

finance the Stone Mountain Memorial Project in Georgia.22 At its peak in 1895, the organization

had more than 252 members. Like their Union counterparts, the Camp Garnett veterans

maintained a sizeable membership, and were active in the Huntington community.

20George Seldon Wallace, Huntington Through Seventy-Five Years (Huntington: n.p., 1947), 284; Dickinson and

Meadows, A History of Camp Garnett. 21Ibid, p.38.of 22Dickinson and Meadows, A History of Camp Garnett.; United Confederate Veterans, Garnett Camp. U.C.V. Camp

Garnett Records. Accession 2001/ 703.205. Rosanna Blake Library, James E. Morrow Library, Marshall University,

Huntington, WV.

95

DECORATION DAY

For veterans’ organizations the most important time of the year for memorialization was

Decoration Day, the precursor to the modern Memorial Day. On May 30 (June 6 for Confederate

veterans) the holiday was recognized by decorating graves of fallen veterans, marching in

celebratory parades, and giving solemn memorial speeches. The day had its origins in

Charleston, South Carolina, where black southerners and their northern allies celebrated the

sacrifice of fallen soldiers on May 1, 1865, by decorating the graves of local soldiers.23 The

event achieved a national standing in 1868 and 1869 after national G.A.R. commander-in-chief

General John A. Logan called for a national holiday observed by Union veterans in which the

decoration of graves was practiced.24

The first appearance of a symbolic act of decorating soldiers’ graves around the end of

May in Huntington comes from the diary of William Dusenberry. On May 30, 1885 William

Dusenberry mentioned his son Caleb (referred to affectionately as “Cale”) journeying across the

Ohio River to plant flowers at soldiers’ graves.25 It is hard to ascertain the widespread

recognition and participation of the Huntington population in conducting this ritualized

decoration ceremony. Surviving newspaper records do not mention the event in 1885 or 1886. It

was not until 1887 that the Huntington Advertiser mentioned the observance of Decoration Day

by the G.A.R. Bailey Post no. 4, providing the first recorded appearance of the organization in

the city. The first Decoration Day event was a small and somber affair as it began at 8 in the

23 Blight, Race and Reunion, 65. 24 Ibid, 71. 25William F. Dusenberry. Carrie Eldridge Collection “Dusenberry Diaries,” May 30, 1885, Accession 1992/01.0551,

Special Collections, James E. Morrow Library, Marshall University, Huntington, WV.

96

morning with a procession from the Odd Fellows Hall to the cemetery, the ceremony decorating

the flowers, and then a return to the city to hear memorial services by Chaplin Poling and Rev.

Samuel Jones.26 For many years after the first Decoration Day was observed, the day remained a

largely selectively observed day with a minority of the population as participants. In 1888 the

observance of Decoration Day occurred in Ohio rather than Huntington with Sam Gideon being

one of the prominent speakers at the Memorial Service in Proctorville.27

By 1890, Decoration Day had become more prominent in the city, but the

commemoration was not singled out completely by Union memory of the war. The unveiling of

the Robert E. Lee Memorial Statue in Richmond Virginia occurred on May 29, 1890. In a tone of

weariness and sorrow, William Dusenberry wrote in his diary of the unveiling of the statue,

“Rebels as much Rebels as ever.”28 For the Friday evening copy of the Huntington Advertiser,

the biggest story of the day was the Lee statue. While Lee’s statue took a prominent place on

page one of the newspaper, 1890 was the first time Decoration Day became a local article of note

with its own title and significant coverage of the event. In the sweltering heat of midday, the

procession of commemorators made their way over a mile to the cemetery. A company of young

girls representing the States of the Union were overcome by the heat and the arduous trek of the

procession. Several observers were also quick to exit the procession and memorial service due to

the unbearable heat and make their way to the shade of the trees for lunch and refreshment.

26Huntington Advertiser, May 27, 1887; Huntington Advertiser, June 4, 1887. The cemetery referred to in the paper

is probably Spring Hill Cemetery located over 2.1 miles away. Adding on the return trip to Marshall for the

memorial services and the entire procession was a long dedicated walk of over 4 miles. The following paper (June

4th) mentions the event as “Memorial Day” which would be used interchangeably with “Decoration Day” until 1967

when the day became the official federal holiday of “Memorial Day.” Blight, Race and Reunion, 65. 27Huntington Advertiser, June 2, 1888. 28William F. Dusenberry. Carrie Eldridge Collection “Dusenberry Diaries,” May 29, 1890, Accession 1992/01.0551,

Special Collections, James E. Morrow Library, Marshall University, Huntington, WV.

97

However, despite the conditions, a large gathering of Huntington and Guyandotte residents were

present at the ceremonial decoration and memorial service. While Union veterans’ graves were

decorated, Rev. W.P. Walker, conductor of the memorial service and Confederate veteran,

reminded the assembled crowd that Confederate graves were to be decorated on June 9.29

Walker’s presence as conductor of ceremonies can be seen as an attempt to reach out to

Confederate veterans for a joint Decoration Day commemoration and a settling of disputes.

However, Dusenberry’s disparaging remarks about the “Rebels,” as well as the separate

Confederate Decoration Day event, illuminate the deep running animosity that still played a part

in public commemoration of the war.

Although a joint commemoration was held in 1891, the absence of another joint

commemoration and subsequent separate Decoration Day events by both sides until 1898 proved

that this reconciliationist event was too difficult for either side to condone. William Dusenberry’s

account of the Decoration Day of 1891 paints the picture of a unified and reconciliationist event

organized and observed by Union and Confederate veterans. He reported, “about 2 o’c[lock] the

Procession headed by the Hun. Band and Military Co. passed composed of the Grand Army Vets

and the Ex-Rebels all united and going to the Cemetery to decorate the graves of the Soldiers of

both armies, the Blue and the Gray united.”30 This united presence seemed to lend excitement to

the course of events. Three years earlier, commemoration had been minimal, but this time

29 “Decoration Day,” Huntington Advertiser, May 30 1890; William F. Dusenberry. Carrie Eldridge Collection

“Dusenberry Diaries,” May 30, 1890, Accession 1992/01.0551, Special Collections, James E. Morrow Library,

Marshall University, Huntington, WV. It is unknown why June 9 was chosen as the Confederate Decoration Day;

eventually the day of June 6 (the week after Memorial Day) would become the staple day for Confederate

Decoration Day. 30 William F. Dusenberry. Carrie Eldridge Collection “Dusenberry Diaries,” May 30, 1891, Accession

1992/01.0551, Special Collections, James E. Morrow Library, Marshall University, Huntington, WV.

98

several businesses were closed and flags were adorned throughout the town.31 Yet, despite the

unity and public festivity, why were joint commemoration not mentioned for several years after?

While we do not know what was said at such events it seems that this joint event

necessitated a muted memorial service devoid of legacy shaping rhetoric from both sides.

Politically charged speech might provoke the very issues that had led to war and prove

intolerable. A joint event, although symbolically unified, served neither group in shaping the

legacy of the war. A unified event conveyed a more local response focusing on the particular

individuals at the graveyard, their shared bravery, and the strong bonds that formed across

familial and community lines. For Confederates especially concerned over connecting to a larger

national Southern identity, holding a joint commemoration meant giving up any attempts at

maintaining that link to the Lost Cause.

The years following 1891 saw a growing support for commemorating Decoration Day,

but the divergence of the two ceremonies reflected the different attitudes towards the event. By

1893 Decoration Day had become a more popular holiday for the city with the closing of

businesses, the orchestration of a city-wide event, and the invitation for various local and state

groups to participate. In 1893, G.A.R. members and members of the Knights of the Golden

Eagle, a fraternal organization, from Ironton and Charleston were present at the ceremonies.32 By

1896 the day had become, “A Day of Memory,” as the Huntington Advertiser called it in bold

letters on the front page.33 Memorial services now extended beyond the day itself, and the entire

31Ibid. Dusenberry even comments on the inadequacy of his sons’ use of “two small dirty flags” to adorn his

business while stores next to him were fully bedecked and beautifully decorated. This shows the emergence of a

strong adherence to the holiday within the town as it has become more popular amongst the population. 32 Ibid. 33“A Day of Memory,” Huntington Advertiser, June 1, 1896.

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city was halted in observance.34 The day now encompassed a wide regional attendance as

observers not only participated in the Huntington procession but traveled to nearby towns in both

Kentucky and Ohio.35 The next year saw a Decoration Day “grand military concert” performed

by the Second Regiment band of Huntington in Ashland, Kentucky, open to all.36 Street cars

were decorated, businesses were closed, and a general “holiday air” hung about the occasion.37

The event had become more than a simple and solemn procession but a new holiday that was

much more celebratory than its earlier observances. Decoration Day was becoming akin to

another Fourth of July with the accompaniment of thousands of national flags and ceremonies.

No doubt, the G.A.R. members of Huntington felt a sense of pride in equating such a

commemorative ceremony with the celebratory message of victory and jubilation. By utilizing

such parallels the public consciousness of Decoration Day was a continual reminder of the

victory of the United States and the gallant courage of the Union veterans. On this day, Union

veterans and their fallen brethren were championed and honored in ways not seen since the end

of the Civil War. This positive portrayal of the war reminded and reeducated the local populace

of the patriotism and sacrifice of these Union veterans.

Confederate Decoration Day, on the other hand, was a stark contrast to the joyous

festivities of Memorial Day. The memorial ceremony was a quiet affair attended by mostly

veterans and their families. The solemnity was appropriate: Union veterans celebrated the

sacrifices achieved for victory on their Memorial Day, but former Confederates saw the graves

34 “Memorial Sermon,” Huntington Advertiser, May 25, 1896. Rev. F.N. Lynch of the Methodist Episcopal Church

presented a memorial sermon to the members of the G.A.R. observed before Decoration Day as opposed to after it. 35 “A Day of Memory,” Huntington Advertiser, June 1, 1896. A list of nearby towns that are recognized in the article

are Cattletsburg, KY; Ashland, KY; Getaway, OH; Gallipolis, OH; and Portsmouth, OH. 36“Decoration Day,” Huntington Advertiser, May 28, 1897. 37 “A Day of Memory,” Huntington Advertiser, June 1, 1896.

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of their comrades as a reminder of their defeat. This was a day for reflection, and could be seen

as a yearly pilgrimage to reaffirm faith and devotion to the memory of the Lost Cause. It began,

upon arriving at the cemetery, with the repair and maintenance of the graves to ensure they were

presentable and in good order. Following this, the ceremony began and reflected on the valiance

of the dead. Unlike the Union celebration though, former Confederates’ commemoration was

characterized with a strong sense of loss. Newspaper coverage of the event discussed singing old

songs filled with weariness and emotion. “I saw a way-worn traveler in tattered garment clad,”

was one such verse sung by these old veterans still clinging to memories of the past.38After the

ceremony, attendees relaxed and most of the attendees gathered for a communal dinner.39

The year 1898 saw the greatest effort toward a reconciliationist Memorial Day, as both

sides again strove to bury the sectional hatchet. On May 31, 1898, Huntington, like most of the

rest of the nation, was celebrating Commodore George Dewey’s victory over Spanish forces in

the Battle of Manila Bay (May 1, 1898). Memorial Day and “Dewey Day” had merged into a

celebration of the services of military men both living and dead. 40 This united military effort led

to a more relaxed and fraternal feeling toward all Civil War veterans. Military camaraderie

appeared to be the bridge that might facilitate an end to the differences of veterans. “To honor

and respect a foe who believes he is right,” opinioned a Huntington newspaper editor, “is in

keeping with our national creed and in line with the teachings of God.”41 Dr. Walker of Fifth

Avenue Baptist Church was once again asked to open the ceremonies with prayer asking that

38 “Confederate Decoration Day,” Huntington Advertiser, June 7, 1897. 39 “Confederate Dead Remembered,” Huntington Advertiser, June 6, 1896. The article mentions a parade and dinner

were missed due to the primary for the state election. I believe due to other articles mentioning the solemnity of the

occasion that the “parade” would have been more a procession and didn’t necessarily reflect “jubilant festivities.” 40 “Remembered the Dead and Praised the Living,” Huntington Advertiser, May 31, 1898. 41 Ibid.

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Americans “be conservative and forgiving even to our enemies.”42 During Memorial Day

celebrations and Confederate Decoration Day ceremonies both Union and Confederate graves

were decorated by G.A.R. and U.C.V. members side by side. The Union veterans assisted in

cleaning up and maintaining the graves of their fallen enemies, giving a writer for the Huntington

Advertiser pause to reflect that “indications are decidedly that by next year there will be but one

Memorial Day for both wearers of the blue and gray, and that the graves of each will alike be

decorated with flowers by the old opposing comrades of the two armies.”43 However, the writer’s

optimism proved premature. The next year’s Memorial Day remained an amicable affair with

former Union soldiers decorating the graves of their Confederate adversaries and vice versa, but

there remained separate Decoration Day commemorations for many years. What made this last

great step toward a unified Decoration Day commemoration fail?

One of the biggest obstacles to further reconciliation was an inability to find common

ground beyond shared military service. Existing sources suggest that the ceremony and

commemoration of Memorial Day in 1898 was very muted both politically and with regards to

the meaning or references to the Civil War. Celebration was centered on America’s recent

victories, its national ideas of freedom and democracy, and on America’s committed and brave

military men (past and present). This suggests that this event was more a truce than a step toward

reconciliation because, although both sides were amicable to one another, no steps were taken to

address the differing narratives of the veterans. Neither side wanted to bring up the meaning of

the war, because to do so was to reopen the old wounds. It is never stated in any newspaper

42 Ibid. 43 “Flowers for Confederates,” Huntington Advertiser, June 6, 1898.

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article or record of the veterans’ groups whether serious consideration was ever given to a joint

Decoration Day event. The meaning of the war for both sides was not conducive to a shared

program. David Blight, in Race and Reunion, illustrates that for Union veterans, race and the

cause for emancipation had played a strong part in the Union legacy of the war.44 However, in

regards to Union veterans in Huntington, there appears to be no strong indicator on their views in

regards to the cause of emancipation and race. There are no records relating to Union veterans’

connections to the African American communities in Huntington or to shared bi-racial

celebrations or events. Union veterans in Huntington connected their cause to the greater history

of America and combined their memories of the war to the growing sentiment of patriotism and

in some parts “jingoism” of the 1890s. Their legacy of the war had as much to do with reminding

the public of their contribution to the war, and the determination of the United States’ volunteers

to suppress the Southern rebellion.

Despite such reminders of the rebellious nature of former Confederates, Union veterans

could have found more common ground with their counterparts since race appeared to play a

peripheral role in their message. Former Confederates, on the other hand, could not take steps

toward reconciliation without losing a greater part of their Southern identity. Many of the

Confederates in Huntington came from the Cabell County area, and remained adamant about

their Virginia heritage. Cabell County had been a thriving area for commercial development on

top of having fairer terrain more conducive to plantation agriculture. This development made the

area more connected to Southern and Northern markets, and many of its most influential

plantation owners, including members of the Jenkins and Sanders families, styled themselves

44 Blight, Race and Reunion, 2-3.

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Virginia aristocrats. While this sentiment did not apply to all of these former Confederates, it

gave them exposure to Southern culture and identity. Family connections and this Southern

perspective drove many to fight for the Confederacy and to reconcile must mean the

abandonment of this connection to Southern tradition and identity. Ex-Confederates were unable

to fully reconcile with Union veterans without giving up the idea that they were themselves

displaced Southerners, heirs to a civilized and harmonious society that had become ingrained in

Lost Cause rhetoric.

Decoration Day remained a separate holiday for both former Confederate and Union

veterans. Although Memorial Day/ Decoration Day events were held by the G.A.R. and U.C.V.

well into the 1920s their influence receded along with their numbers. By 1919, a U.C.V.

Decoration Day on June 3 saw only thirty members present for the ceremony.45 With their

diminished numbers came an increasing challenge for control over the meaning of the holiday.

After World War I, Memorial Day became more associated with all American veterans rather

than just Civil War veterans. Values such as military service and valor became increasingly

dominant over regional identity and the legacy of a war that was almost sixty years past. These

values appealed to all Americans regardless of which side their fathers or grandfathers had

fought, and allowed for the holiday to become more celebratory than ceremonious. One Union

veteran, B.W. Ingham lamented, “To our discredit, Memorial Day has lost some of its

significance. The day when we are supposed to commemorate the great sacrifice of life is not a

gala holiday, but a time when the heroism of the men of the sixties should cause a weighing of

45 “Cross of Honor is Conferred Upon Veteran Phillips,” Huntington Advertiser, June 3, 1919.

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our own patriotism”46 By 1921, the G.A.R. lacked enough resources to effectively coordinate

Memorial Day commemorations and asked for the American Legion to help orchestrate the event

signaling a “new meaning” for the holiday.47

MONUMENT-MAKING AND THE SEARCH FOR IDENTITY

For veterans of the Civil War one of the most powerful connections they could make

between the present and the past was through public monuments. Monuments were powerful

symbols that were constant reminders to the community of the veterans’ collective memory of

the war. They perfectly encapsulated the most important elements of the veterans’ respective

messages. Huntington veterans were keenly aware of the importance monuments had in

developing a lasting and accepted narrative of the war. As early as the early 1880s veterans were

already setting up monuments throughout the city to remind locals why they had chosen a side

and fought against former neighbors, friends, and family. Although several of these monuments

were destroyed or never progressed beyond the fundraising stage, their influence upon

Huntington remained great. Raising funds along with a public dedication of the completed

monument made the process of monument-making a very personal affair for many residents,

including those who were unaffiliated with the veterans’ groups. Giving money for the creation

of a monument required a personal connection to veterans and remained an important link that

bound residents to a sectional identity. The amount of time and effort behind monument making

also served to reopen old wounds and reignite the embers of sectional animosity. Although

veterans never returned to the violence they had unleashed back in the 1860s, these conflicts over

46 “Memorial Day is Not Gala Holiday,” Huntington Advertiser, May 26, 1919. 47 “Decoration Day Takes New Meaning; Homage Paid Four Wars’ Heroes,” Huntington Advertiser, May 30, 1921.

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monuments served to demonstrate how tenaciously these veterans clung to their identity, values,

and respective legacies of the war.

In 1880, Sam Gideon, a clothing merchant and Union veteran, negotiated as chairman of

the city council a proposal with the Huntington Water Company to provide water access to

hundreds of Huntington’s residents. As a gift of appreciation to the city, the Huntington Water

Company commissioned two water fountains to be erected: one on the corner of Fifth Avenue

and Ninth Street and the other on Third Avenue and Tenth Street. On these fountains were built

statues of Union veterans shouldering arms, and became the first monuments in the town

regarding the American Civil War. Sam Gideon’s specific role and motives in securing these

fountains is unknown, but as a strong proponent of the G.A.R. in later years, this may have been

one of the first attempts to organize former Union veterans or at least pay homage to their

service.48

These monuments were commissioned in the same year as an important mayoral debate

between the Republican nominee Sam Gideon (Union veteran) and the Democratic nominee Dr.

Edward S. Buffington (Confederate veteran and son of Huntington’s first mayor, Peter C.

Buffington).49 Dr. Buffington was elected Huntington’s sixth mayor, and Gideon refrained from

reentering politics until 1886 when he was elected again to the city council. The election of Dr.

Buffington could be viewed as a victory for former Confederates proof, that the area retained a

stronger base of support for Confederate sympathy after the war. However, such views are too

narrow a conclusion to draw on such small evidence, and it behooves historians to remember two

48 “Sam Gideon Made Fountain Deal,” Huntington Advertiser, August 3, 1915. 49 Baumgartner, First Families of Huntington, 17.

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important political and social aspects of this scenario. First, there was a great upheaval occurring

in state and local politics in West Virginia during the late 1870s and early 1880s as outlined in

Chapter One. Second, familial and local connections influenced decision making in the Cabell

County area, and these factors favored Dr. Buffington (a Cabell County native and son of a

former mayor and large landowner) over Sam Gideon (a German immigrant who lived in Illinois

before and during the war and then moved to the area in 1871). While historians should not

forget these two important caveats, the symbolic importance surrounding their former sectional

loyalties should not be forgotten. Unfortunately, there remains little evidence about the

importance or tone of the election other than its occurrence, but it is strikingly coincidental that

the creation of a monument to the sacrifice of Union veterans was conducted in the same year.50

With the growing importance of the Decoration Day commemorations, Civil War

veterans turned toward improving the grave sites of their fallen comrades to serve as headstones

for individual soldiers but also as a noticeable, growing monumental area. Although veterans had

passed away in the many decades since the end of the war, many were interred in their local

cemetery or next to various family members in private cemeteries. By 1892, Camp Garnett

veterans had decided upon creating a lot for their deceased comrades and to reclaim deceased

comrades who had been buried in faraway battlefields.51 The first to be interred in this new lot

was General Albert G. Jenkins who had been killed at the Battle of Cloyd’s Mountain in 1864

50 “Sam Gideon Made Fountain Deal,” Huntington Advertiser, August 3, 1915. 51 Dickinson and Meadows, A History of Camp Garnett. According to the minute books of the Camp Garnett

veterans, they mention a “Camp lot” in Spring Hill Cemetery as early as 1892. However, George Seldon Wallace’s

book, Huntington Through Seventy-Five Years, mentions in its last page that the city council awarded both

Confederate veterans and Union veterans a lot for their fallen comrades in 1894. A further note in the minutes of

Camp Garnett (dated Dec. 1, 1894) suggest that the veterans had purchased several adjacent lots in the cemetery for

their own uses, but were given back the money by 1894 by the city council and “officially” given a specific plot to

bury their fallen comrades.

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and buried at the battlefield. For the next few years, the Camp Garnett veterans located former

comrades buried on several battlefields and re-interred them at Spring Hill Cemetery. This

development gave veterans space to conduct separate Decoration Day commemorations and land

for remembering the cause of their respective sides. The U.C.V. of Camp Garnett saw the

potential uses of a dedicated area for veneration of fallen comrades as it could serve the needs of

the living by instructing descendants and new residents about the conviction and bravery of these

former Confederate soldiers. By August 6, 1898, Camp Garnett veterans decided on the

“importance of erecting a suitable monument on our lots in Spring Hill Cemetery,” and

appointed an eleven-man committee to begin soliciting contributions.52 The monument was

completed by May 1900 and the public dedication was scheduled for June 23, 1900.53

For Huntington ex-Confederates, the monument was a way of reinforcing and connecting

to a larger Confederate and “Southern” identity. This monument which was dedicated to the

“memory of soldiers of the Confederate Army” connected the graves of Huntington’s veterans

with fallen Confederates on battlefields and cemeteries throughout the South.54 Their attempts to

reach out to this larger culture of Confederate memorialization can be illustrated by their

submission of their dedication to the national magazine, Confederate Veteran. Although local

sources covering the monument’s dedication have been lost, an article written by the Camp

52 Dickinson and Meadows, A History of Camp Garnett. The entry was dated “Aug. 6, 1898.” 53 Dickinson and Meadows, A History of Camp Garnett. It is unknown exactly who gave money for the monument

or how much money was raised over the course of almost two years’ worth of effort. The collection of funds was not

without its hiccups though. One member, Ed B. Talley, was elected to the committee to help solicit funds for the

monument and given the list of subscriptions (paid and unpaid) for the Monument. Upon the completion of the

monument and asked for the money, Talley had lost the list of subscriptions. An ad was taken out in the newspaper,

for all persons who had donated money or were planning to and had signed onto the list to report to the commander

Cameron L. Thompson. Talley was also told to give over all the money he had received in regards to the monument

fund or face charges of embezzlement and expulsion. 54Confederate Monument, Spring Hill Cemetery, Huntington, WV.

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Garnett veterans was sent to the magazine detailing the event and its scope. The monument was

jointly dedicated by the U.C.V. Camp Garnett veterans and the local chapter of the United

Daughters of the Confederacy led by their longtime president, Lou Garland Buffington (second

wife of Peter Cline Buffington).55 It was the second Civil War monument to be dedicated in

West Virginia and attracted “hundreds of veterans from adjoining counties” to make a crowd of

“several thousand persons.”56 The song “Carry Me Back to Old Virginia” was played and the

monument unveiled to reveal a tall stone obelisk with a polished bronze soldier standing atop it.

Upon the monument was inscribed on a bronze plaque which read, “To the memory of the

soldiers of the Confederate Army who lie here and their comrades who sleep in this cemetery,

who defended with life and fortune and sacred honor, their liberties and their homes.”57 This

public dedication and article demonstrate these ex-Confederates’ enthusiastic desire to connect to

this identity in hopes of validating their service.

During the Civil War, West Virginia had torn itself apart. West Virginians’ political

affiliations as Unionists or Confederates were largely determined by their sectional identity.

After the war, West Virginia’s status as a Union state deprived local ex-Confederates of an

important part of their “Southern” identity. These ex-Confederates lived in a Union state, and

away from the tumultuous difficulties raised during the Reconstruction Acts that hit the former

Confederacy. On top of that, as the commercial center that was Huntington grew up around

them, these ex-Confederates became more closely identified to the rise of industrialism that was

closely associated with Northern cities or even worse the “New South” cities that sought to adapt

55 S.A. Cunningham, ed. “The Monument at Huntington, W.Va.,” Confederate Veteran, Vol. 8, No.9, (September

1900), 403; Baumgartner, First Families of Huntington, 6. 56 Ibid. 57 Confederate Monument, Spring Hill Cemetery, Huntington, WV.

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Southern culture to emulate a Northern ideal. Their lack of identity or, more importantly, a

connection to their perceived identity seemed to invalidate their struggle. Huntington’s ex-

Confederates’ tried to make up for this omission through enthusiasm and fund-raising. By

drawing attention to the Confederate cause through monuments, separate Decoration Days, and

social events they maintained a public reminder of their separate identity. This dedication to the

larger theme of Confederate memorialization was characteristic of other ex-Confederates in West

Virginia. For instance the U.C.V. organization in Charleston erected a statue on the grounds of

the state legislature to the famous Confederate general, and West Virginia native, Thomas

“Stonewall” Jackson. This monument connected the state’s Confederate veterans with veterans

from other states by demonstrating their contributions to the war effort. Huntington’s fervor in

memorializing and vindicating the Confederacy came from a deep identity crisis that was

common to many ex-Confederates in the border states.58

Interestingly, Union veterans suffered from a similar identity crisis, one that was more

political than social. This chapter has already discussed the more politically conscious nature of

the city’s G.A.R. members, but has not explained why. Why were the G.A.R. members of

Huntington more inclined than their Confederate comrades to participate in and shape the

political landscape? Looking at the inverse of the Confederate crisis of identity provides a clue.

Union veterans (unlike Confederates) resided in a state identified with the Union, separate from

the Reconstruction Acts and their association with the South, and within a growing industrial city

58 Historians have recently taken a renewed approach to viewing the issue of the border states and their development

after the Civil War; some notable works include: Anne Marshall, Creating A Confederate Kentucky: The Lost Cause

and Civil War Memory (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2013); M.M. Manring, “Community and

Memory After the Civil War: The Case of Daniel Ashby in Chariton County, Missouri,” Gateway Heritage: The

Magazine of the Missouri Historical Society 13, no. 3 (Winter 1993), 34-47; Stephen McBride, “Camp Nelson and

Kentucky’s Civil War Memory,” Historical Archaeology 47, no. 3 (2013), 69-80.

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characteristic of Northern manufacturing. Yet, how much did that characterize their Northern

sectional identity? Many Northerners and especially Union veterans equated their Northern

identity with another important element: being a Republican. Blight describes Union veterans

and especially G.A.R. members as “a ‘voting machine’ for Republicans.”59 G.A.R. posts were

already characterized by their continual tendency to vote Republican, but the situation proved

more complicated in West Virginia. The coalition of Republicans that had maintained “Radical”

rule in the state had collapsed by 1872, and the Democratic Party held power thereafter.

Democrats also held power in Huntington for much of its history, and the first Republican

mayor, A.H. Woodworth, was elected in 1886 in a major political upset.60 Union veterans were

increasingly aware that despite the Union identity they believed they shared with their state, they

remained continually frustrated politically by the Democratic Party. Despite the G.A.R.’s

significant membership, they were unable to wield much influence in local and state politics.61

Although monuments served many purposes, they were very important in helping to draw

attention to the veterans’ concerns over identity. While veterans’ groups themselves reminded

59 Blight, Race and Reunion, 157. 60 The political situation in Huntington was much like the compromises and splits in West Virginia’s state politics.

Throughout much of its history, the town had a Democratic mayor. Although several members of the city council

were Republican (including Sam Gideon) they were never really threatened by a strong Republican party. Like in

state politics, most Republicans in the state did not agree with the “Radical” platform of the party but contended

with Democrats over financial issues or maintained loyalty to the party that had seen them through the war. On two

occasions there were major upsets to this pattern: Firstly, the election of A.H. Woodworth which came after the

election of E.A. Bennet, a Union veteran from West Virginia (who was a Democrat). Secondly, the election of W.F.

Hite in 1896 when the Democrats split over the Free Silver Movement and gave the Republicans the victory. See:

Robert L. Archer, Robert L. Archer Collection “Chronicles of Early Huntington, 1871-1896,” Accession 530

(Manuscript 124), Special Collections, James E. Morrow Library, Marshall University, Huntington, WV; George

Seldon Wallace, Huntington Through Seventy-Five Years, (Huntington: 1947), 282-283. 61 Grand Army of the Republic, “Roster of Department of West Virginia, G.A.R., 1915,” Grand Army of the

Republic, Department of West Virginia, Ms 80-7, The West Virginia State Archives, Cultural Center, Charleston,

WV. The G.A.R.’s membership has never been able to be accurately determined. The only known clue as to the size

of the G.A.R. membership comes from hints and clues in newspapers and a small pamphlet printed off for the 1915

Annual Reunion of West Virginia G.A.R. members.

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local audiences of their national affiliation, monuments were able to portray this connection

more effectively. That could also work in reverse: by reinforcing national ideas and themes

within a local context. For example, sometime after the creation of the new Cabell County

Courthouse in 1903, G.A.R. members erected a monument on the courthouse grounds. The

monument is simply titled, “In Memoriam” and details the name of the organization and the

acting officers.62 Why was such a large monument with such a small title and message placed in

such a public area? The monument’s placement on the courthouse grounds demonstrates the

symbolic effort of G.A.R. members to reinforce the Northern identity of Huntington. Frustrated

by years of Democratic control and the demonstration of Confederate support in the area as

illustrated by their large monument dedication in 1900, Union veterans erected a monument on

the very steps of the courthouse. This development proclaimed that despite the southern

sympathies in the town, Huntington maintained a strong connection and identity to the Union.

The presence of strong Union support for the war did not evaporate after the war was over, and

Union veterans hoped to remind the residents of Huntington of that connection. More

importantly, the G.A.R. as an important voting bloc of the Republican Party emphasized their

presence and efforts in electing Republican candidates to the very courthouse where the

monument stands (and throughout the city and county as well). The use of these monuments as

important symbols of identity resulted in the strongest clash between former Union and

Confederate veterans in the city.

62 Grand Army of the Republic Monument, Cabell County Courthouse, Huntington, WV.

112

As early as August 1914, the U.C.V. members of Camp Garnett assembled a committee

to raise funds and organize the creation of a new monument to be erected in Ritter Park.63 The

monument was to be dedicated to the “Women of the South,” and thereby fulfill the veterans’

desire to connect to the broader Confederate culture. In October they began sending out letters

asking for donations, and by January news coverage reported that the organization was sending

the prospectus to other Confederate camps for donations.64 The committee was assisted by the

local Daughters of the Confederacy and even requested their President, Lou Garland Buffington,

be the model for one of the mother sculptures.65 Funds were raised throughout much of 1915

eagerly anticipating the creation of the monument.

Meanwhile, early in August a news report circulated in the Huntington Advertiser that

mentioned the removal of the union statue, “Old Iron Soldier,” on the corner of Fifth Avenue and

Ninth Street.66 The report mentioned that the soldier was being moved due to the decision by the

board of education to create a new walkway around the Carnegie library next to the statue. The

statue was also mentioned to have been vandalized with its gun having been recently stolen, and

upon its removal to Ritter Park a replacement gun was to be issued.67 An article published two

days later mentioned that a new pedestal was to be erected for the statue to stand on alongside

two cannons given to the city by the federal government.68 The city took the utmost care in

maintaining the reverence and solemnity of moving this long standing memorial, and attempted

63 United Confederate Veterans, Garnett Camp. U.C.V. Camp Garnett Records. Accession 2001/ 703.205. Rosanna

Blake Library, James E. Morrow Library, Marshall University, Huntington, WV. The records suggest that there was

an earlier committee appointed at a previous meeting but no other record is found in their minute book of when that

committee was organized. 64 Ibid,; “Perspective of Monument Sent,” Huntington Advertiser, January 22, 1915. 65 Ibid. 66 “Old Iron Soldier May be Moved to City’s New Park,” Huntington Advertiser, August 2, 1915. 67 Ibid. 68 “Provide a Pedestal for Old Iron Statue,” Huntington Advertiser, August 4, 1915.

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to provide it with suitable lodging at the new Huntington park. It is not known whether the city

council was aware of the Confederate veterans’ plan to build a large Confederate monument

close by the proposed placement of the Union statue. Nevertheless, the idea of moving the Union

statue next to the Confederate memorial sparked instant distress among Union veterans. A

unionist-sympathizing businessman, A.B. Brode, along with the local G.A.R. members, filed a

protest against the actions of the city in moving the statue to the park. Brode claimed:

Strangers entering the park could not help but draw the contrast between the

handsome Confederate monument and the small, obsolete drinking fountain,

topped by a Union soldier and worn with many years buffeting of the winds and

rain . . . The contrast would be discreditable to the Union cause through no fault

of the local post.69

Brode’s claim was reasonable: how could anyone feel pride in the Union’s cause if the

Confederate monument appeared far more grandiose and overpowering? The

domineering presence of such a monument provided its own context, and may have

demonstrated to new residents that locals sympathized with the Confederacy more than

the Union. The seriousness with which the Union veterans took this action suggests that

the public image of the war and of the legacy of both sides remained contentious. Neither

side it seemed held too much influence over the other with both veterans groups

maintaining close to 80-100 members by 1915.70 It was left to the mayor and the city

69 “Protest to Mayor Against Removal of Statue to the Park,” Huntington Advertiser, August 6, 1915. 70 The members in the G.A.R. Bailey Post in Huntington in 1915 can be found in a roster book of the G.A.R.

Department of West Virginia. In it, the pamphlet claims Huntington contained 75 members. See Grand Army of the

Republic, Department of West Virginia Collection. Ms 80-7. West Virginia State Archives, Culture Center,

Charleston, WV.

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council to decide the fate of the Union statue. No records remain of the conversation held

between the mayor, city council, and the G.A.R., but the records show that instead of

moving the statue to Ritter Park it was instead scrapped and sent to the junk heap.71 It

seems odd that Union veterans might abandon one of their last remaining symbols of the

Unionist legacy in the city, and not seek to create a new one. Unfortunately, the lack of

adequate records of Huntington’s G.A.R. post prevents historians from knowing their

reaction to this event. However, their silence after the destruction of the statue is telling.

As Unionist memory of the war slowly faded away, the Lost Cause carved out a

niche of support amongst future generations. Despite the U.C.V.’s fundraising to build a

memorial to the “Women of the South,” sufficient capital was never raised for such a

venture. The ongoing saga over what to do with the money already raised lasted well into

the 1930s.72 Although ex-Confederates and Unionists still maintained monuments

throughout Huntington, only a few remained to demonstrate the groups’ legacies on the

city.73 In the waning years of the 1920s, the loss of Civil War veterans mirrored their

declining participation in and influence over the public memory of the Civil War.

Decoration Day became a more joyous celebration associated with all veterans in

71 “Old Veteran Sent to the Junk Heap,” Huntington Advertiser, August 7, 1915. 72 Letters within the Camp Garnett Records illustrate that debates arose among the U.C.V. and the Daughters of the

Confederacy over how best to utilize the one thousand dollars raised for the monument. Eventually by the late

1920s/early 1930s the groups agreed upon the purchase of a plaque at Stone Mountain National park in Atlanta,

Georgia, which read “Camp Garnett, No. 902. U.C.V., Huntington, West Va., In memory of, ‘The Women of the

South.’” See: United Confederate Veterans, Garnett Camp. U.C.V. Camp Garnett Records. Accession 2001/

703.205. Rosanna Blake Library, James E. Morrow Library, Marshall University, Huntington, WV. 73 There was also a monument to J.L. Caldwell, prominent businessman, Union veteran, and G.A.R. commander,

that was located on a hill overlooking Ritter Park. Blueprints from the 1940s detail the presence of this monument

and a photo exists of it located in the Images of America book, Huntington written by Don Daniel McMillian. The

book mentions that the monument was also desecrated by vandals. It asserts that Caldwell’s daughter, Ouida,

claimed that the monument was being intentionally neglected due to political posturing. See, Don Daniel McMillian,

Images of America: Huntington (Charleston: Arcadia Publishing, 2003) 123.

115

American wars as opposed to a strictly solemn affair for Civil War veterans. Monuments

were removed, and fundraising ventures were no longer successful enough to build new

ones. Huntington residents seemed to lose focus on the Civil War. With the cessation of

activities and public demonstrations of commemoration, the Civil War receded from

public discussion. True, such sentiments remained with older residents and were to some

degree passed down through subsequent generations.74 These sentiments took on an

increasingly antiquated look relevant only for history books and old soldiers tales. When

people discussed the war, they were often quick to point out the conflict on both sides,

and diplomatically argue that the meaning of the war was not up to the author to decide.75

Union and Confederate veterans had spent a large amount of time between the

1870s and the 1890s working toward improving Huntington. Economic prosperity had

overcome the sectional differences of the former foes allowing for a temporary truce.

This lack of strong political and sectional strife had allowed the town to emerge as an

important commercial and industrial center along the Ohio River. However, below the

veneer of reconciliation lay the same passionate feelings that had led men off to battle

back in 1861. Union and Confederate veterans had never reached out to discuss the issues

or motivations behind the war, and had thus opened the way for sectional identities to

continue to influence historical memory. For instance, there remains a strong Sons of

74 Wiatt Smith, Guyandotte Centennial Program, 1810-1910 (Huntington: Standard Printing & Publishing Co, 1910)

79-80. In a segment entitled, “Four Score Years in Guyandotte,” Charlotte Temple Douthitt discusses how despite

her and her husband’s Unionist sympathies the Union soldiers had burned her house down after the Battle of

Guyandotte. The Confederates are mentioned as having kidnapped her husband and son, but much of the focus on

the war years in her recollection are fixated on the Union soldiers’ decision to burn their house and how much she

had lost. It feels as if such feelings had not been healed by time. The widespread use of this program for the

Guyandotte centennial can be seen as an attempt to focus the issue of the Battle of Guyandotte on the subsequent

burning of the town. 75 Ibid, 26, 79-80.

116

Confederate Veterans presence in Huntington in 2016.76 Their continued devotion to the

creed of their ancestors is a by-product of these veterans’ lack of open communication

between the two groups. Regardless of their shared economic background, their shared

valor on the battlefield, and their shared familial connections, the veterans’ groups in

Huntington were never able to fully reconcile and remained as divided as they had been

at the beginning of the Civil War.

76 The Robert S. Garnett SCV Camp #1470 operates in the Huntington/Charleston Metro Region. Ernest Blevins,

“Sons of Confederate Veterans honor history,” Charleston Daily Mail, August 3, 2015. Robert S. Garnett Camp

SCV Camp 1470, “Robert S. Garnet Camp SCV Camp 1470 Facebook Page,”

https://www.facebook.com/RobertSGarnettSCV1470/, accessed January 15, 2017.

117

CONCLUSION

As veterans passed away, it fell to subsequent generations to pass along memories and

meanings of the Civil War. Some burned with inherited passion and continued the legacy of

social organizations, through groups such as the Sons of Union Veterans, the Sons of

Confederate Veterans, and the United Daughters of the Confederacy. Others may have merely

reminded their children of their grandfathers’ service upon passing a solitary stone soldier along

the sidewalk. Veterans had left their marks upon the landscape of Huntington and Cabell County.

Their monuments towered over public places, their graves clustered in special lots in several

cemeteries, and their stories still occasionally appeared in the local newspaper.1 David Blight has

argued that the continued national memory of the war was forged amidst a shared experience in

wartime mixed with white supremacist sentiment.2 Cabell County followed a similar path. But

veterans in West Virginia, and Cabell County in particular, also shared a common bond in

experiencing the quick and sudden rush of industrialism in the area. This rapid industrialism

often bound former enemies together in the mutually beneficial economic opportunities that

came with the railroads and burgeoning industry. However, the underlying differences that had

led the two sides to fight one another for four years did not vanish with economic prosperity.

When the Civil War started, sectional animosity permeated every aspect of daily life in

western Virginia. Ideology suppressed the sentimentality of neighbors who had lived beside one

another for decades and passed along memories of bitterness and hatred. Infused with this

sectionalism, soldiers and civilians changed their daily practices, purchases, and concerns. As the

1 “‘Uncle Billy’ Miller, 90 Years Old, Recalls Battle of Mud River,” Miscellaneous Civil War Materials, Rosanna

Blake Library, James E. Morrow Library, Marshall University, Huntington, WV. 2 David Blight, Race and Reunion.

118

war concluded, these feelings retreated from their dominating position in the lives of West

Virginians. As economic issues grew in importance, the legacy of sectional animosity retreated

from public political discussion. While these feelings lost ground in public discourse, they

smoldered within the memories of those who had lived through it. The Civil War continued on at

the local level, buoyed by former soldiers who feared that their legacy might be forgotten.

Before and throughout the Civil War, Cabell County was rocked by severe dissension

between pro-Northern and pro-Southern supporters. The area had been richly developed and

served as an intersection between the industries of the North and the commercial agriculture

characteristic of the South. As tensions grew stronger and war loomed on the horizon, Cabell

Countians split over how to handle these profound political and sectional animosities. During the

first year of the war attacks by both sides further destabilized the region and left bitter memories

of war atrocities. Throughout the war years, pro-Union and pro-Confederate civilians continued

to live next to one another. After the war ended, these sentiments still lingered and many Union

and Confederate soldiers returned to an embittered county, the culmination of both sides’

relentless denunciations, attacks, and reprisals. The early years of Reconstruction mirrored the

climate in the state’s capital as victorious Unionists angered by years of war sought to punish

their Confederate neighbors. In Cabell County, ex-Confederates’ attempts to reenter society were

met with obstruction. As time passed, however, a growing reconciliationist movement began to

develop among Unionists. These conciliatory Unionists saw the development of the Radical

Republican policy of enfranchisement and civil liberties for African Americans as abhorrent.

They abandoned the liberal policies of Radical Republicans and sided with former Confederates

to maintain a strict racial hierarchy within the region. By 1872, West Virginia Democrats with

119

their ex-Confederate allies had achieved dominance in the state and many in Cabell County

welcomed it.

How the legacy of the Civil War continued to be remembered and shaped beyond the

1920s remains undiscovered. The dynamic shifts that had occurred in the late 19th and early 20th

century had a profound impact on the development of the region. How further political, social,

and economic effects played out on the region may have significantly altered the way Cabell

Countians and other West Virginians perceived the Civil War and its meaning and legacy. The

passing of the veterans left their work to their children, and how much they continued to shape

this public memory is unclear. Veterans had taken an active role on the local level to influence

their communities’ perceptions of the war. Their effects were hampered and delayed by the rush

of industrialism in the area, but their message remained long after the region had changed. It

remains to other historians to provide a more comprehensive breakdown of sectional differences

between state and local politics throughout the rest of the state. Such a study might show the

severity or pointless effect of industrialism on the shaping of a public memory of the Civil War

in local communities.

There remains another aspect to be analyzed by future historians. As the town of

Huntington grew and more jobs became available, the town attracted a sizeable African-

American population. In his in-depth and thorough dissertation, Cicero Fain analyzes the black

community that developed in the town.3 Although Fain does a wonderful job of explaining the

narrative of African-Americans in the town, there is missing some critical development on the

3 Cicero Fain, III, “Race, River and the Railroad: Black Huntington, West Virginia, 1871-1929” (Ph.D. diss., Ohio

State University, 2009).

120

influence of sectionalism upon white West Virginians and their relationship with black West

Virginians. For instance, how much influence did emancipation play out in stories retelling the

significance of the war? Did African Americans help to shape that memory, and how much of a

relationship did they have with the Unionist G.A.R. in the region? The evidence of these

relationships may no longer exist, but this was a critical element of the Union legacy of the war

and the effect it had on West Virginians is important. A telling example of this relationship is the

curious case of Jack Washington. Jack Washington was listed in the United Confederate

Veterans roster as belonging to the Quartermaster Division of the 36th Virginia Cavalry Battalion

[a.k.a. Sweeney’s Battalion] but was also given the solitary distinction: “col.,” colored.4 Jack

Washington was afforded a place on the U.C.V.’s roster and was given donations for burdens he

suffered after the war. There is no mention of any Jack Washington fighting in a Virginia

regiment during the Civil War, so what relationship did he have with the men of U.C.V. Camp

Garnett? How much did this relationship affect the message of the Lost Cause in Huntington or

shape the emancipationist element of the Unionist legacy? Jack Washington has his own

tombstone placed in the Confederate lot in Spring Hill Cemetery only a few feet from the grave

of Albert Jenkins. [Picture 4.1]

The issue of industrialism in West Virginia has received a lot of attention from notable

historians such as Ronald Eller, Ronald Lewis, Jerry Bruce Thomas, and Ken-Fones Wolf, but

how has it developed amidst the lingering sectional tensions in the state? A new focus should

seek to create local studies demonstrating the changes occurring in areas severely impacted by

extractive industries in the state and how they internalized their memories and meaning of the

4 Dickinson and Meadows, A History of Camp Garnett.

121

Civil War. Did they have the opposite effect of veterans in Cabell County where lingering

tensions of the war continued many years after the war, and only with the development of coal,

timber, and oil industries slowly lose their ability to shape a large public memory of the war?

What effects might this have had on a reconciliationist movement between the two former

adversaries?

This thesis demonstrates the conflicting and inter-related dynamics between the societal

and economic forces at play in the development of Civil War memory. Although the promise of

economic prosperity under industrialization served to mitigate more overt tension between the

two groups, it was unable to reconcile the two conflicting sides that tore the nation apart. It

demonstrates that the cultural forces surrounding Civil War memory developed into a whole new

battlefield for Americans to fight over for decades to come. Within Huntington, West Virginia,

the determination to pass along a definitive legacy of the Civil War was the driving force for

both veterans groups. Yet, because there never materialized a definitive legacy of the war,

Huntington remained a conflicted city with two memories of the war. Two legacies that are

embodied by the silent stone monuments that continue to wage the war that their creators had

never stopped fighting.

122

Picture 4.1 Photograph of the Grave of Jack Washington: The grave of Jack Washington

located in the Confederate lot of the Spring Hill Cemetery in Huntington, WV. An unknown

figure in the U.C.V. Camp Garnett, there is very little mention of him in the records of the

organization. There is a mention of a monetary donation from the organization to him to help

with his needs, and a roster that includes his name followed by the abbreviation: “col.” This

photo courtesy of Seth Nichols. “Jack Washington Tombstone © 2016 Seth Nichols”

123

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130

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132

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133

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APPENDIX A: OFFICE OF RESEARCH INTEGRITY APPROVAL LETTER